Harris Campaign Knocks Trump Over Event in ‘KKK Capital of Michigan’

The Harris campaign attacked former President Trump for campaigning Tuesday in Howell, Mich., a city with historic ties to the Ku Klux Klan and that was the setting of a white supremacist demonstration last month, where attendees expressed support for the former president.

The Harris campaign’s Michigan communications director, Alyssa Bradley, criticized the former president for “choosing to rally in a town that was historically known as ‘the KKK capital of Michigan.’”

“This [Tuesday] event on ‘crime and safety’ isn’t a dog whistle from Trump — it’s a bullhorn,” Bradley said in a statement Monday.

“His visit underscores the core choice in this election — between a prosecutor and a criminal, someone who has spent her life making communities safer and someone who encourages violence, and someone who will build a future where all Michiganders can get ahead and someone who wants to take us back to the days of the KKK,” Bradley later added.

The town has long been associated with the klan, in large part as a result of meetings that Robert Miles, a former Michigan Grand Dragon of the klan, held at his nearby farm many decades ago. The city has worked to distance itself from that reputation, but it occasionally faces obstacles.

In Howell last month, about a dozen protesters marched through the city’s downtown, waving flags with white supremacist slogans while chanting in support of the former president.

Just a few miles away on the same day, demonstrators displayed flags with antisemitic messaging and “KKK” written on them over the side of a highway overpass. In videos, protesters were captured chanting, “We love Hitler. We love Trump.”

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The Trump campaign, however, fiercely rejected the Harris campaign’s attacks and suggested news organizations were not applying the same level of scrutiny to the Harris administration. The campaign provided a list of events or rallies that Harris has held in the last month that took place in areas with past incidents of racism or antisemitism.

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