Trump says on his return to Michigan that he will stop the “Kamala crime wave”

HOWELL, MI — In a speech to a crowd of law enforcement and supporters, former President Donald Trump warned of an impending “World War III” if voters do not return him to the White House in November.

“We live in very dangerous times when it comes to crime,” Trump said during his campaign rally in the key swing state on Tuesday, August 20. “We are closer to World War III than we have ever been. The level of power and weapons in the world is so bad. You need the right person as president.”

The former president delivered his 55-minute afternoon address in a warehouse-sized facility managed by the Livingston County Sheriff's Department that had enough space for dozens of Trump supporters and dozens of members of the press.

Trump had announced his planned visit just four days earlier and said his remarks would focus on political plans for crime prevention.

He largely stuck to that theme, although there were digressions with references to the automobile industry and past elections.

Surrounded by members of the Michigan state police force, Trump claimed that the police were “under attack” and had “problems with the laws of the land.”

“We will get rid of this problem,” Trump said.

The Republican attributed much of these “difficulties” to policies supported by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent in the 2024 presidential election.

Trump added several nicknames to her name during his speeches, including “Comrade Kamala” and “radical liberal Kamala Harris.” He also called her a Marxist, “the border czar” and “the godmother of sanctuary cities.”

“There must be a change”

“We're here today to talk about how we can stop the Kamala crime wave, which is at an unprecedented level,” Trump said. “It's so far to the left, you can't even imagine it.”

Trump disputed the Biden-era violent crime rate, which the Harris team touted as evidence of their tough-on-crime stance.

The Harris campaign disputes crime statistics that Trump's campaign touted as evidence that he would crack down on crime if elected in November.

“You can't just walk across the street to get a loaf of bread,” Trump told the crowd in Howell. “You get mugged. You get raped. There has to be a change.”

Trump said that as president he would advance policies that provide support and resources to law enforcement.

He said the Biden administration – and by extension Harris – supports policies that make enforcing police law more difficult than it was during the Trump administration.

“Look at 'radical liberal' Kamala Harris: She was the leader of the anti-police crusade,” Trump said. “They're just targeting the police. I like to say that the Republican Party is the party of common sense.”

Trump mentioned that Harris once supported the “Defund the Police” movement.

Harris praised the “defund the police” movement following the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and questioned whether the money was spent effectively on public safety, but during her 2024 campaign she has stopped short of saying she supports cutting funding for law enforcement.

Trump said he believes Harris will do so.

“If she ever had the chance, she would do anything to defund the police,” Trump said. “We can't let that happen. We have to protect (law enforcement officers). And we have to show them love and respect.”

Trump said that as president he would “crack down on local Marxist (district attorneys) who refuse to put murderers in prison.”

Border Guard

Trump devoted a large part of his speech on Tuesday to promising that as president he would carry out “the largest deportation operation in the history of the country.”

He criticized the Biden-era immigration policies, which the Republican said had reversed his administration's efforts to regulate border crossings from Mexico to the United States.

“On day one, I will close the border,” Trump said. “I will send Kamala's illegal immigrants home where they belong.”

He criticized Harris' work as California's attorney general, a position she held from 2011 to 2017.

Trump did not address his $6,000 donation to her re-election campaign as attorney general in 2014. A copy of one of the checks was recently turned into a political billboard on I-75, about 60 miles southwest of Howell.

At his campaign rally on Tuesday, Trump briefly deviated from his crime prevention plans and spoke about the automobile industry.

The former president said that under Biden's administration, other countries would build auto manufacturing plants, which would lead to fewer auto jobs in the United States.

“They are building some of the largest auto factories in Mexico,” Trump said. “We will not allow that.”

He claimed that if nothing changes, “every auto worker in this state will lose their job in three years.”

Read more: “Trump is a strikebreaker,” says UAW Chairman Shawn Fain at the Democratic Party Convention

Trump also told the crowd that he did not believe polls showing he was unpopular with suburban women.

“It's a fake poll,” Trump said, without saying which poll he was referring to. “I keep the suburbs safe. I keep the illegal immigrants out of them. We've seen a lot of fake polls.”

He also seemed to reference the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.

“We won the first time and we did even better the second time,” Trump said.

The Republican has repeatedly refuted claims that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” in Biden's favor.

Supporting Actor

Among the law enforcement officers in attendance Tuesday was Livingston County Sheriff Mike Murphy, who was part of a group of Michigan sheriffs who addressed the crowd ahead of Trump's arrival.

Murphy has made headlines in recent years for supporting law enforcement policies consistent with conservative values.

After Michigan became the nation's 21st red flag state—an initiative that allows a state to order the temporary confiscation of firearms from a person suspected of posing a danger—Murphy spoke at length in a Facebook video in April 2023 about why he believes the premise of red flag laws is unconstitutional.

He questioned why only a showing of a preponderance of the evidence was required to issue an injunction, rather than the higher standards of probable cause or cause beyond a reasonable doubt.

He also questioned how courts could actually prove that someone was lying when they frivolously applied for a risk order. He said: “If someone genuinely believes something – whether we believe it to be true or not – how can you say that person knowingly and intentionally made a (false) allegation? … How can we prove that? You can't.”

The 2023 sheriff's comments came the same day that the Livingston County Board of Commissioners unanimously passed a resolution pledging not to allocate public funds to enforcing gun ownership restrictions in its jurisdiction.

At the Trump rally on Tuesday, Murphy told the crowd that he favors the federal police policies adopted and enforced during the Trump presidency.

“It would be great if I could put my little umbrella over Livingston County and keep everything local and we could just live in our little utopia,” said Murphy, a Republican. “But that's not how it works. We're affected by state policy. We're affected by federal policy.”

The sheriff said a pregnant woman in Livingston County was involved in a two-vehicle crash earlier this month involving an “illegal immigrant” who had previously been arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

“We've had success in breaking down these trends and locking up the bad guys, but the real success is in prevention, right?” the sheriff told the crowd Tuesday.

He said immigration policy shows the influence federal law has on local law enforcement.

“We lived under the Trump administration for the past few years, and you saw what a difference it made,” the Livingston County sheriff said. “That's why we're here supporting (Trump). It's really as simple as that. We need to get back to that.”

Murphy is the top law enforcement officer in a county that has proven its pro-Trump stance. Livingston County voters favored Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections.

Four years ago, the Republican received 60.5 percent of the vote in the county, compared to 37.9 percent of voters who favored Biden. And in 2016, nearly twice as many voters in Livingston County favored Trump as Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Michigan voters overall preferred Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2016.

Murphy was not the only elected Republican in attendance Tuesday to support another Trump victory in November.

U.S. Reps. John James and John Moolenaar, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, who is currently running for Michigan's vacant Senate seat, Paul Junge, who is running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in November, state Rep. Matt Hall, the House minority leader, and state Sen. Aric Nesbitt, the Michigan Senate minority leader, joined Trump in Howell.

Trump's visit on Tuesday was his first return to Michigan since hosting a rally at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids last month.

Howell's story

The Trump team's decision to campaign in Howell drew criticism from Harris and her Democratic allies, who pointed to the community's history of white supremacist groups.

Last month, a group of white supremacists marched through Howell. About a dozen of them chanted “Heil Hitler,” carried Nazi and Ku Klux Klan flags, distributed racist literature and displayed banners with anti-Semitic messages.

The city government has acknowledged the city's connection to white supremacist Robert E. Miles, who was the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Michigan in the 1970s.

“Trump chose to rally in a city historically known as 'the Ku Klux Klan capital of Michigan,'” Alyssa Bradley, communications director for the Harris campaign in Michigan, said in a statement before Trump arrived in the city. “This crime and safety event is not a dog whistle from Trump – it's a megaphone.”

When a reporter asked Trump on Tuesday why he campaigned in light of the history of white supremacy in Howell, the former president replied, “Who was here in 2021?”

Someone in the audience replied, “Biden,” which drew applause and laughter from the pro-Trump crowd and appeared to be a response to what appeared to be hypocrisy on the part of critics who associated Trump, but not Biden, with the city’s history.

Biden visited Howell in October 2021 to promote two pillars of his domestic agenda: a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill and a $3.5 trillion package to expand social programs.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.