Donald Trump held a rally in Novi, Michigan in Oakland County on Saturday at Suburban Collection Showplace, with 10 days to go before Election Day and as the state’s in-person early voting opens statewide. His Democratic rival Vice President Kamala Harris is also in Michigan, visiting Kalamazoo with Michelle Obama for a get-out-the-vote rally today.
In the final days leading up to the presidential election, the GOP presidential candidate told those in the Detroit suburb that he’d make “Detroit great again, finally after 45 years.” He addressed that he “took a lot of heat” recently due to his speech at the Detroit Economic Club, where he disparaged the city earlier in the month (The Detroit-born Lizzo clapped back at his remarks, with the singer who was rallying with Harris saying if Harris wins, the country will be “resilient like Detroit.”)
On Saturday, he chose to double down on his demeaning outlook on Detroit, ripping on the U.S. city once again.
“They want me to say, ‘Oh Detroit is great or something,’” he lamented. “It needs help.” He added: “And people said, ‘Oh, he wasn’t positive.’ I can’t be positive,” he said of Michigan’s largest city, despite Detroit’s economic picture improving in recent years and with it expected to climb in the near future, though there are challenges with the high number of lower-income households, as University of Michigan’s Economic Outlook on the city of Detroit suggests.
Trump went on to say that “Detroit and some of our areas makes us a developing nation,” he said of the United States, with the highest total GDP and one of the Top 10 richest countries of the world. He claimed that “China doesn’t have any place like that,” implying that China does not have any poor areas like Detroit or the other unnamed areas he referred to, which is simply untrue.
Trump also highlighted United Auto Workers (UAW) rank-and-file endorsing him while addressing the Motor City suburb and ripped on UAW President Shawn Fain in the process, calling him a stupid person. The UAW has officially endorsed Kamala Harris, though some of its rank-and-file members are supporting him.
During his speech, he also spoke of bringing auto manufacturing jobs back to Detroit should he win, but then also hedged saying those plants may or may not be located in Detroit. The response to this part of his speech was unsurprisingly lackluster.
In 2020, Trump lost Oakland County to President Joe Biden 42 percent to 56 percent with Biden also taking the state. Trump also lost the county in 2016 to Hillary Clinton 43 percent to 51 percent, but took the state by 10,704 votes. About 1.4 million absentee ballots have already been returned in Michigan, representing about 25 percent of the total votes in the 2020 presidential race, as The Detroit News reports.
As is the case with national polls, the two candidates are running neck and neck in the swing state of Michigan. In 538 Project and ABC News latest polls averages, Harris is at 47.6 percent with Trump at 47.2 percent as of Saturday morning. The final The New York Times/Siena Poll published on Friday, the Harris and Trump are deadlocked with 48 percent each for the popular vote.
