By Helen Coster and Nathan Layne
HOWELL, Michigan (Reuters) -Former President Donald Trump visited a Michigan town on Tuesday one month after white supremacists rallied there, sparking renewed criticism from Democrats who accuse his campaign of stirring up racial tensions for political gain.
The Trump campaign released prepared remarks that showed he would attack Democratic rival Kamala Harris’ record on criminal justice while speaking at the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office in Howell, a town of some 10,000 people northwest of Detroit.
A Trump campaign spokesperson rejected criticism of the site of the event, promising Trump would speak against “hate of any form.” President Joe Biden visited Howell in 2021.
The campaign stop is one of a number Trump is holding this week as Democrats meet in Chicago to formally choose Vice President Harris as their nominee in the Nov. 5 election.
But the event in Howell has attracted particular attention because of the town’s association with the Ku Klux Klan. The town has historical links to the KKK: In the 1970s, Grand Dragon Robert Miles had a Howell mailing address and held meetings on a nearby farm.
About a dozen white supremacists chanted “Heil Hitler” and carried signs reading “White Lives Matter” during a march through downtown Howell last month. According to local media, another group of demonstrators shouted, “We love Hitler, we love Trump” from a highway overpass just outside Howell.
The Harris campaign has criticized Trump for planning the event in Howell while failing to condemn what it called a “blatant display of racism and antisemitism in his name.” In an interview with Reuters after a rally in Pennsylvania on Monday, Trump did not directly respond to a question about that criticism.
Trump has been widely criticized for racist remarks about Harris, who if elected in November would be the first Black woman and South Asian person to become president.
At a gathering of Black journalists last month he falsely suggested that she recently “turned Black” to advance her political career. He often insults Harris’ intelligence, her heritage and her looks.
Last week, an official Trump campaign account on X posted two images side-by-side, one showing a pristine small-town American front porch with a flag and the other showing mostly Black migrants crowding outside a New York City hotel. The caption on the post read: “Import the third world. Become the third world.”
The Trump War Room post drew fire from the NAACP civil rights group as racist, but Trump’s aides stood by it. Trump has often suggested that the United States is facing an “invasion” of migrants from the southern border.
‘WHY THERE, WHY NOW?’
Nicole Matthews Creech, executive director of the Livingston Diversity Council, which was created in 1987 in response to KKK activity in the community, said residents who encountered last month’s rally ignored it or rebuked the demonstrators.
“They’re not welcome here, and hate is not welcome here,” she told Reuters.
Trump’s visit to Howell one month after that rally should not be viewed in a vacuum, said Nazita Lajevardi, an associate professor of political science at Michigan State University.
“It begs the question: why there, why now?” Lajevardi said, noting that Howell is not populous. “The timing is important, the symbolism is important, and it can’t just be seen in a vacuum.”
Michael Murphy, the sheriff of Livingston County and a Trump supporter, said in an interview he suspects the Trump campaign chose Howell because criminal activity has remained flat in Livingston County for about 15 years.
“It really gets me fired up when people try to turn anything in this county into racist or hate because that’s not us,” Murphy said. “We can’t change the fact that at one time the grand dragon of the KKK lived in our county and unfortunately that’s history, but history is just that – it’s history.”
The Trump campaign chose Howell because the event will get coverage by media outlets in Detroit, located in the critical swing state of Michigan, campaign officials said. It is also where Murphy, a stalwart ally of Trump, is based and the event will showcase his office’s vehicles and equipment, they said.
“Trump will travel to Howell to deliver a strong message on law and order, making it clear that crime, violence and hate of any form will have zero place in our country when he is back in the White House,” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said.
(Reporting by Nathan Layne and Helen Coster; Additional reporting by David Shepherdson; Editing by Ross Colvin, Deepa Babington and Daniel Wallis)
