Christian Smith
DETROIT (AP) — Donald Trump blamed immigrants for stealing government jobs and resources as he courted separate groups of black voters and hardline conservatives in battleground Michigan on Saturday.
The former Republican president also made several new baseless allegations attacking the country’s voting system.
But Trump’s fiery comments about illegal immigration, long a staple of his unapologetic message, marked a bonding theme in downtown Detroit as he sought to unite a delicate political coalition at both a black church and a group known for attracting supremacists. whites.
“The people crossing the border – all those millions of people – are inflicting tremendous harm on our black population and our Hispanic population,” Trump told a cheering crowd of thousands of conservative activists packed into a vast convention hall.
“They are not human beings. They are animals,” he said later, referring to members of violent immigrant gangs.
Trump’s diverse weekend schedule underscores the evolving political forces shaping this fall’s presidential election as he seeks to deny Democratic President Joe Biden a second term.
Few states could be more important in November than Michigan, which Biden won by less than 3 percentage points four years ago. And few voting groups are more important to Democrats than African Americans, who made up the backbone of Biden’s 2020 political base. But now, less than five months before Election Day, Black voters are expressing modest signs of disappointment with the 81-year-old man. Democrat.
Trump, who turned 78 on Friday, is struggling to capitalize on his apparent openness.
His crowd was much smaller, but also warmly welcoming, when he visited Church 180 earlier in the day. Abandoned vehicles sat outside the modest brick building with “Black Americans for Trump” signs posted. Rap music and barbecue smoke wafted from a pre-event meeting organized by the Black Conservative Federation group.
“It’s a very important area for us,” Trump told the church crowd, which included a significant number of white people. He promised to return “some Sunday” for a sermon.
He argued that the black community “is being harmed” by illegal immigrants in the country.
“They are raiding your jobs,” he said.
Trump offered a similar message later in the day when speaking at the Tipping Point Action “People’s Caucus,” a group that the Anti-Defamation League says is linked to a variety of extremists.
About 24 hours before the former president spoke, known white supremacist Nick Fuentes entered the hall surrounded by a group of enthusiastic supporters. Security quickly escorted him out, but Fuentes created political trouble for Trump after attending a private lunch with the former president and the rapper formerly known as Kanye West at Trump’s Florida estate in 2022.
Turning Point has emerged as a force in Republican Party politics in the Trump era, particularly among its “Make America Great Again” movement, despite the Anti-Defamation League’s warning that the group “continues to attract racists.”
“Numerous individuals associated with the group have made bigoted statements about the black community, the LGBTQ community, and other groups,” the ADL, an international anti-hate group, wrote in a background memo. “Although TPUSA (Turning Point USA) leaders say they reject white supremacist ideology, well-known white nationalists have attended their events.”
Turning Point spokesman Andrew Kolvet rejected the ADL’s characterization as “smears and lies.” He added that Turning Point has been blocking Fuentes from attending its events for “years.”
“The ADL is a scourge on America, sowing poison and division. They have completely lost their way,” Kolvet said, describing the ADL’s criticism as “a badge of honor.”
Meanwhile, Democrats offered a competitive perspective from a distance.
“Donald Trump is so dangerous to Michigan, dangerous to America and dangerous to black people,” said Michigan Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist II, who is African American. He called it “offensive” for Trump to speak at the Turning Point conference, which was taking place at the same convention center that was “the epicenter of his election effort to steal.”
In fact, dozens of angry Trump loyalists chanted “Stop the count!” descended on the TCF Center, now called Huntington Place, the day after the 2020 presidential election as absentee ballots were being counted. Local media captured scenes of protesters outside and in the lobby. The police prevented them from entering the counting area.
The protests came after Trump tweeted that “Biden votes are being found all over the place” in several states, including Michigan.
The false notion that Biden benefited from widespread voter fraud has been widely debunked by voters in both parties, the judicial system and members of the former Trump administration. Yet Trump continues to promote this misinformation, which echoed throughout the conservative convention over the weekend.
Speaking from the main stage, Turning Point founder and CEO Charlie Kirk falsely described the conference location as “a crime scene.”
Moving the conversation forward, Trump raised the possibility of voter fraud this fall.
“We need to follow the vote. We need to protect the vote,” Trump accused. “The whole electoral process is so corrupt.”
This extreme rhetoric does not appear to have harmed Trump’s standing with black voters.
Among Black adults, Biden’s approval rating has fallen from 94% when he began his term in January 2021 to just 55%, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll published in March.
About 8 in 10 black voters have an unfavorable opinion of Trump, with about two-thirds saying they have a “very unfavorable” opinion of him, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in June.
Trump won 8% of the black vote in 2020, according to AP VoteCast. And in an election expected to be close, even a modest change could have consequences.
Omar Mitchell, a Detroit restaurant owner who attended the church meeting, said he supported Trump because “the money was booming” when he was president.
“We used to grow up just because you’re black means you’re a Democrat,” Mitchell said. “That’s out of the question these days.”
Trump argues that he can attract more black voters because of his economic and border security message, and that his criminal charges make him more relatable. At church Saturday afternoon, he repeatedly promised to “bring back the auto industry,” while also noting, “Crime is more rampant here and in African-American communities.”
Kimberly Taylor, who was invited to the church stage by the Trump campaign, thanked Trump for “coming to the neighborhood,” while pastor Lorenzo Sewell said Biden attended an NAACP dinner in the city “but never came to the neighborhood.” ”.
The pastor asked Trump how to “keep the black dollar in the black community.”
The black community, Trump said, “needs to stop crime.”
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Associated Press writers Will Weissert and Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.
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