Harris campaign attacks upcoming Trump speech in city where racists rallied

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The Harris campaign attacked former president Donald Trump on Saturday (August 17, 2024) for an upcoming event in Howell, Mich., where white supremacists last month rallied and chanted “We love Hitler. We love Trump.” A Trump spokeswoman strongly denied any link between their planned campaign event Tuesday (August 20) and the racist rally, calling the accusation “absurd.”

About a dozen masked white supremacists marched through downtown Howell on July 20. Pictures and video from the event showed attendees declaring their support for the former president while waving banners with white supremacist slogans. Howell has long been associated with the Ku Klux Klan because of the rallies Michigan-based Grand Dragon Robert Miles held on a nearby farm in the 1970s and 1980s, although community leaders have worked to shake off that image. (Miles died in 1992).

“The racists and white supremacists who marched in Trump’s name last month in Howell have all watched him praise Hitler, defend neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, and tell far-right extremists to ‘stand back and stand by.’ Trump’s actions have encouraged them, and Michiganders can expect more of the same when he comes to town next week,” Harris’s Michigan communications director, Alyssa Bradley, said in a statement.

Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said there was no connection between the choice of campaign stop and the history of extremist activity in the city. She noted that President Joe Biden visited Howell in 2021, and said Harris also visits cities where “racist protests and marches have occurred in the past.”

“President 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,” Leavitt said in an email.

A person familiar with the Trump campaign said the location was chosen to be in the Detroit media market, a potentially crucial area given Michigan’s status as a swing state in recent elections.

Biden visited Howell in 2021 to promote his infrastructure initiatives and a package to expand social programs. He was met with protests upon arrival to the county, which he lost in 2020 by more than 20 percentage points, while still winning Michigan. Trump narrowly won the state in 2016.