When Donald Trump spoke to congressional Republicans in June, the former president apparently thought it’d be a good idea to trash Wisconsin’s largest city. Milwaukee, the GOP candidate told his allies behind closed doors, is a “horrible” city that’s overrun by crime.
Trump’s timing could’ve been better: He slammed Milwaukee just weeks before the city would host the Republican National Convention.
But at least in this instance, the former president trashed the city before arriving there. During Trump’s remarks at the Detroit Economic Club, the GOP nominee was more direct in his insults. The Washington Post reported:
In bashing Vice President Kamala Harris in his remarks to the Detroit Economic Club Thursday, Donald Trump also insulted the city hosting him. “Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s the president,” Trump said. “You’re gonna have a mess on your hands.”
“The whole country will be like, you want to know the truth? It’ll be like Detroit. Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president. … We’re not going to let her do that to this country. We’re not gonna let it happen.”
It’s possible that Trump simply forgot during his improvised comments that he was in Detroit while he was disparaging the city. The former president did, after all, recently relish “a great day in Louisiana” after spending the day in Georgia.
It’s also possible that the GOP nominee knew where he was, and he simply didn’t care whether he was insulting his hosts’ hometown or not.
Either way, Mike Duggan, the city’s Democratic mayor, quickly responded online that crime is down in Detroit and the local population is growing for the first time in several decades. “Lots of cities should be like Detroit,” the mayor wrote, “and we did it all without Trump’s help.”
Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan’s Democratic governor, had a similar message around the same time, writing online, “Detroit is the epitome of ‘grit,’ defined by winners willing to get their hands dirty to build up their city and create their communities — something Donald Trump could never understand. So keep Detroit out of your mouth. And you better believe Detroiters won’t forget this in November.”
This probably isn’t the “let Detroit go bankrupt” line that undermined Mitt Romney’s presidential hopes in Michigan eight years ago, but it’s not that far off, either.
If you’re thinking that local voters will be hearing a lot about Trump’s rhetoric between now and Election Day, you’re not the only one.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MSNBC political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”