Former President Donald Trump hosts a rally in Novi, Mich. on Oct. 26, 2024. The former president renewed his pledge to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to execute a mass deportation of immigrants not in the country lawfully. (Kyle Davidson/Michigan Advance)
This story originally appeared on Michigan Advance.
With just over a week until Election Day, former president Donald Trump made yet another stop in Michigan, following his rally in Traverse City the night prior where he took aim at former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, for their endorsement of his opponent, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
During his stop at the Suburban Collection Showplace in Novi, Trump encouraged voters to take advantage of voting by mail and in-person early voting before continuing to bash Harris on manufacturing and immigration.
Several Republican candidates and Trump allies rallied ahead of Trump’s remarks, including Republican Michigan U.S. Reps. John James and Lisa McClain and U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-California. GOP Michigan U.S. Senate nominee and former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers; Michigan U.S. congressional candidate and former state Sen. Tom Barrett; Trump’s former senior adviser Stephen Miller and members of the group Autoworkers for Trump 2024 encouraged attendees to help mobilize voters to reelect the former president.
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At the start of Trump’s comments, a heckler standing near the press area repeatedly shouted “You lost!” and “Fascist” before being escorted out by Novi police.
While Trump stirred controversy during a previous visit at the Detroit Economic Club where he said the “whole country will end up being like Detroit,” he continued to double down on his comments on Saturday.
“I wasn’t that positive. I mean, you know, they want me to say, ‘Oh, Detroit’s great, oh it’s so great. You know, it needs help,” Trump said.
“For generations, this state was the world capital of automotive production and one of the great manufacturing centers in all of history. You know, you were the best. You were the best. But then a lot of bad things started happening. Forty years ago, actually, but your politicians have done nothing,” Trump said. “They were either stupid or corrupt, one or the other. They were both. But year after year, globalist politicians like Kamala Harris sold you out and let other countries loot and pillage and plunder your wealth and our jobs and our American dreams.”
Throughout his campaign, Trump has stoked fears about Chinese auto plants being built in Mexico to sell vehicles in the U.S. without paying tariffs, despite auto industry experts saying only one such facility exists. However, in Saturday’s speech, Trump claimed to have killed the projects.
“I have to tell you, I just did something very big for Detroit, and from Michigan in particular, in particular, I killed the massive plants that were going to be built in Mexico. They’re dead. They’re all dead. And they were going to drive out all your damn business,” Trump said.
“They were building the biggest plants in the world in Mexico. They were all — and, you know, who owned them? China. And they were going to flood our country with cars from just across the border. And I killed them. You know why I killed them? Because I said, we’re not going to have it. I’m going to win, and I’m going to put tariffs on those cars, and those cars will never be able to pay the tariff, because it would be too high, and they gave up on the project,” Trump said.
As he blasted Harris and President Joe Biden on auto manufacturing, Trump continued to push back against automakers’ transition to electric vehicles, arguing a pivot to EVs would result in offshoring U.S. auto jobs to China and falsely claiming the Biden-Harris administration had implemented an electric vehicle mandate.
While the Biden administration has set a goal for electric vehicles to make up 50% of all new automobiles sales in the U.S. by 2030, alongside incentives encouraging a transition to electric vehicles, it has not issued a ban on gas-powered vehicles.
However, Republicans have slammed the Environmental Protection Agency’s new pollution standards for vehicles model years 2027 through 2032 as a de facto ban on gas-powered vehicles, though policy experts have told FactCheck.org that automakers would have flexibility in meeting these requirements and could meet them by making their vehicles with internal combustion engines more efficient.
Additionally, Trump blamed the Biden-Harris administration for the loss of 50,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs since the beginning of the year.
Harris’ campaign in turn has argued a second Trump term would hurt Michigan’s auto industry, with Trump pledging to dismantle the Inflation Reduction Act, which provides subsidies to support efforts like clean energy and battery manufacturing, including $500M to retool General Motors’ Lansing Grand River Assembly plant for electric vehicle production, which Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s office said will protect 650 jobs and create 50 more.
“Michigan let us be clear, contrary to what my opponent is suggesting I will never tell you what kind of car you have to drive. But here’s what I will do: I will invest in communities like Flint. Flint, which helped build the auto industry and the [United Auto Workers]. We will retool existing factories, hire locally, and work with unions to create good paying jobs, including jobs that do not require a college degree,” Harris said at a previous rally in Flint.
In addition to criticism of Biden and Harris, Trump reiterated a number of his policy proposals, including no tax on tips, a reciprocal tariff policy and plans to ramp up oil and natural gas production, promising the lowest regulatory burdens.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the United States has led the world in crude oil production for the past six years, hitting a monthly record high in 2023.
Trump also renewed his pledge to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to execute a mass deportation operation, continuing to push claims that the Biden administration had permitted an influx of criminals into the country through their policies at the southern border. The event featured a series of anti-immigration images on the jumbotron.
“We’re the garbage can for the world. We are. We’re a garbage can. We’re like a garbage can. And they dump their criminals, their people with tremendous mental problems from insane asylums, from mental institutions, their drug dealers, their gang members, their jail, their prisons,” Trump said.
He repeated disproven claims about the United States response to Hurricane Helene, falsely stating there had been no response because disaster relief funds had been spent on undocumented immigrants.
According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), nearly 5,000 of its team members are on the ground in the Southeast supporting disaster recovery with over $883 million in federal assistance going directly to survivors.
As part of its response, FEMA has launched a hurricane rumor response page, where it notes that “no money is being diverted from disaster response needs.”
“Disaster Relief Fund money has not been diverted to other, non-disaster related efforts,” it states.
In another post to the page, FEMA emphasized it has enough funding for immediate response and recovery needs, encouraging those impacted by Hurricane Helene to apply for relief.
Trump also repeated several debunked claims about undocumented immigrants taking over apartment buildings in Colorado and Chicago, while continuing to demonize Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio.
While Trump has frequently pointed to immigrants as a source of rising crime, the FBI alongside the The Major Cities Chiefs Association reports an overall decrease in violent crime.
Additionally, multiple studies have found no tie between undocumented immigration and crime, including a 2021 study published in the Oxford Economic Papers which found undocumented immigrants are 33% less likely to be institutionalized compared to US natives.
Another report published by Marshall Project Earlier this year examined policing data in cities that received a significant number of migrants from Texas since 2022 — including New York; Washington, D.C.; Chicago; and Denver — and found no link between crime and the influx of migrants.
Trump also continued his attack on former Rep. Cheney from the night prior, while touting support from several Arab and Muslim Americans, inviting Imam Yasser Aghah, Sam Aasri of the Yemen American Political Action Committee, Imam Saleh Algahaim, Imam Irhabi Mohamed Irhabi, Imam Belal Alzuhiry and Dearborn Heights Mayor Bill Bazzi on stage as he accepted their endorsements. Trump also thanked Hamtramck Mayor Amer Ghalib for his endorsement back in September.
“Kamala is campaigning with Muslim-hating warmonger Liz Cheney, who wants to invade practically every Muslim country on the planet. And let me tell you the Muslims of our country, they see it and they know it. Her father was responsible for invading the Middle East, killing millions of Arabs, millions, and this is the one that Kamala is campaigning with,” Trump said.
Cheney, a longtime Republican critic of the former president, was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and served as vice chair of the U.S. House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 Attack. In her support for Harris, she has argued Trump is both unfit for office and a threat to American democracy.
In response, the Harris campaign noted her own endorsements from Muslim and Arab American leaders organizations and leaders including Detroit Imam Mikail Stewart Saadiq, three Hamtramck City Council members, Deputy Oakland County Executive Madiha Tariq, Emgage and the Black Muslim Leadership Council.
Harris hosted a rally in Kalamazoo Saturday evening alongside former first lady Michelle Obama, while Trump held another rally in State College, Penn.
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