Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump holds a press conference from inside trash hauler at Green Bay Austin Straubel International Airport on October 30, 2024 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
With a garbage truck as a backdrop, Republican vice presidential nominee U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), was back in Michigan Friday, rallying supporters in Portage just five days before the election, as the campaign of former President Donald Trump tries to win over enough voters to recapture the Great Lakes state and its 15 electoral votes.
The garbage truck, with a Trump-Vance banner hanging on the side, was in reference to a comment President Joe Biden made in response to a comic at last Sunday’s Madison Square Garden rally for Trump who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” sparking a significant backlash, including from celebrities like rapper Bad Bunny and actress Jennifer Lopez, who campaigned this week with Vice President Kamala Harris in Las Vegas.
“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” said Biden, according to the original transcript from the White House stenographers. “His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American. It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been.”
While White House spokesman Andrew Bates said Biden was referring to the hateful rhetoric at the rally as “garbage,” Republicans have been quick to try and weaponize the remark in the closing days of the campaign. Trump drove around in a garbage truck during an event in Wisconsin this week.
“These are people who hate their fellow citizens. And I think if this movement of ours is animated by anything, it’s that we love our fellow citizens. We want them to have prosperity again, and that’s why we’re going to make Donald J. Trump the next president of the United States. And to my fellow citizens, you are not garbage,” said Vance at the West Michigan rally.
“It’s the people that surround her [Harris], they’re scum and they want to take down our country. They are absolute garbage,” said Trump.
The GOP outrage follows widespread criticism of the Trump campaign for speakers at the New York City rally also insulting African Americans and Latinos, calling Harris the “antichrist” all the while mocking Harris’ race.
Trump also made comments in Arizona this week that have been interpreted as a threat against former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who has endorsed Harris.
“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her,” Trump said Thursday to right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson. “Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”
Vance has made controversial comments of his own, such as ones concerning Muslims on the popular “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast Thursday, in which he said the idea that Muslims were outbreeding non-Muslims, “scares the hell out of me,” and wrongly claimed that parts of the United Kingdom are run under Sharia law and that the U.K. would become the first “Islamist” country to have a nuclear weapon.
“You have definitely communities in the UK where local leaders are running explicitly on Sharia law and winning elections in cities that are in the United Kingdom,” said Vance “That to me is really crazy and really scary.”
It’s also untrue.
Those comments are part of a false narrative concerning Sharia councils, which are composed of local religious scholars, who advise on issues principally relating to Islamic marriage and divorce. Government officials in the United Kingdom have noted repeatedly that the councils have “no legal status and no legal binding authority under civil law.”
They also parallel long-held conspiracy theories that areas of Dearborn, with the largest Muslim population per capita in the United States, are under Sharia law, which have also been repeatedly disproven.
During the campaign, Trump has tried to appeal to Arab-American voters in Michigan who are angry with the Biden administration’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza. He has secured endorsements from some leaders, including Hamtramck Mayor Amer Ghalib.
Vance also used Friday’s jobs report as an attack point on Harris as the No. 2 person in the Biden administration. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the U.S. economy added just 12,000 jobs in October, which was the slowest pace since December 2020, while the unemployment rate held at 4.1%.
While that was the lowest jobless rate headed into a presidential election in nearly a quarter-century, Vance said the numbers told a different story.
“While Kamala Harris goes out there and brags about the economy being great, we’ve got Michigan families who can’t afford the price of groceries, and importantly over the last month our country lost 28,000 private sector jobs. And it actually gets even worse than that. We lost 46,000 manufacturing jobs. This is what happens when you double down on the failed policies, not just to the last four years, but the failed policies of the last 40 years,” said Vance.
Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Michigan, told The Washington Post that while the overall job gains were well below predictions, expectations that higher interest rates would trigger job losses did not materialize.
“This is what a soft landing looks like in the month of a hurricane,” said Wolfers. “The goal has been to get inflation down, and the economy delivered it with one-10th or one-100th of the pain that most expected.”
Meanwhile, Democrats in Michigan made sure to highlight Vance’s previous comments calling a $500 million federal grant from the Biden administration to convert the General Motors Lansing Grand River Plant into a future electric vehicle plant “table scraps,” despite estimates it would save an estimated 650 jobs and create up to 50 new positions.
“Vance refused to protect hundreds of good-paying, union jobs in Lansing, calling them ‘table scraps,’ and that’s really all we need to know,” said Lavora Barnes, chair of the Michigan Democratic Party. “While Harris and Walz are committed to keeping and creating even more high-quality jobs here in Michigan, Trump and Vance won’t even protect the ones we already have — which is why Michiganders will send them and their MAGA cronies packing next week.”
Also in advance of Vance’s visit to West Michigan, former state Reps. Dave Maturen (R-Vicksburg) and Dave Pagel (R-Berrien Springs) gathered in Kalamazoo and urged Michigan Republicans to reject the authoritarianism of a second Trump term and help turn out voters for Harris.
Vance was last in Michigan on Tuesday when he held rallies in Saginaw and Holland. It is among half a dozen appearances in Michigan since Oct. 2, including in Waterford, Detroit, Auburn Hills and Marne.
Trump, meanwhile, who is campaigning in Warren late Friday afternoon, was in Michigan last weekend for a pair of rallies in Traverse City and then Novi the next day. He is scheduled to hold his last rally of the campaign in Grand Rapids Monday night — which has been his tradition since 2016.
Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is campaigning Friday in Detroit, Traverse City and Flint. Harris is scheduled to be in Detroit and East Lansing on Sunday.
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