Former President Donald Trump on Friday heaped praise on Detroit, Michigan, days after comparing it to a “developing nation.”
At a rally in the city, Trump declared, “Detroit has such great potential.”
“In many ways, it is a sacred place,” the Republican presidential nominee added.
He went on to outline a series of proposals to shore up the American economy and the manufacturing sector.
“We will reclaim our stolen wealth, and the days of Detroit’s economic glory will return greater and stronger than ever before,” Trump said.
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His remarks were a stark contrast to last week, when he said that if his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, is elected president, “our whole country will end up like Detroit.”
Addressing the Detroit Economic Club on October 10, Trump accused China of taking advantage of its status as a developing nation for trading purposes, and then compared Detroit to a developing nation.
“Just look at Detroit,” he said. It’s a “developing area … hell of a lot more than most places in China.”
The former president’s remarks at his rally in Detroit on Friday were abruptly interrupted — just as he was about to tell supporters what his favorite word in the dictionary is — when his mic cut off.
What followed was nearly 20 minutes of Trump pacing around the stage while his supporters alternated between cheering for him, doing the wave, and chanting, “Fight, fight, fight.”
When the mic started working again, Trump said he wouldn’t pay the company that rented him the equipment for the rally.
Trump and Harris both criss-crossed Michigan on Friday in an effort to gain traction with swing-state voters ahead of the election. Trump focused on enclaves that have significant Arab-American and North African American populations.
Harris, meanwhile, sought to solidify her support among union auto workers after failing to secure endorsements from key unions in the battleground state.
According to the FiveThirtyEight’s poll tracker, Harris currently leads Trump by less than one percentage point nationally, and Trump’s appeal to Detroit on Friday is likely part of an effort to win voters’ support in the city.
“I think the former president’s relationship with Detroit has been rocky,” David Dulio, a political science professor and the director of the Center for Civic Engagement at Oakland University, told Newsweek.
“He did win Michigan in 2016, he had great success with folks who would nominally consider themselves Detroiters: blue collar folks in Macomb County just north of the city,” Dulio said. He added that he believes Trump’s recent barbs about the city are rooted in his 2020 election loss in Michigan and the way votes were tallied in Detroit.
But the former president offered the city an olive branch Friday.
“I will put Detroit first,” he said. “I will put Michigan first, and I will put America first.”
