On Radio Show, Harris Lays Into Trump For Disparaging Detroit

Vice President Kamala Harris defended Detroit during an appearance Tuesday with nationally popular Black radio host Charlamagne Tha God just days after Donald Trump disparaged the key swing state city in a rambling speech delivered there.

“Can you imagine, you go to a city and you say you want the votes of those people, and then you disparage the city?” the Democratic nominee for president said during a special hourlong afternoon edition of Charlamagne’s syndicated morning show. “That’s what he did in Detroit.”

Harris’ appearance was designed to shore up her standing with Black men, who are among the several specific demographics targeted by the coup-attempting former president as he runs to regain the White House and stay out of prison.

Harris took questions from both in-studio guests of Charlamagne ― whose real name is Lenard Larry McKelvey ― as well as listeners who sent in questions remotely. The afternoon show was broadcast from Detroit, where Harris arrived late Monday on the first day of what will be an 11-day campaign swing through the seven states where the election will likely be determined.

Some questions were about her record as a prosecutor in California and the false claim that she had sent thousands of Black men to prison for possessing marijuana.

“It’s just simply not true. And what public defenders who were around those days will tell you is I was the most progressive prosecutor in California on marijuana cases,” she said. “Would not send people to jail for simple possession of weed.”

In fact, despite the “war on drugs” crackdown in the 1980s and 1990s, very few people were sent to prison for merely possessing marijuana, as opposed to selling it in large quantities or possessing it while committing a violent crime.

When asked whether Black people deserve reparations because of the wealth their enslaved ancestors generated for their owners and the nation but enjoyed no part of themselves, Harris said the issue should be “studied” but quickly pivoted to how her economic proposals, including a $6,000 child tax credit and a $25,000 grant to first-time home buyers, would help Black people.

And she received several questions about Trump’s autocratic statements of late, including saying he might use the U.S. military against Americans who oppose his policies.

A listener from Georgia asked Harris about Trump’s plan to round up millions of suspected illegal immigrants for deportation. “I have a sneaking suspicion that if Trump wins, he’s going to use this law to put anyone that doesn’t look white in camps, and I’m scared,” he said.

“You’ve hit on a really important point,” Harris answered. “He is achieving his intended effect ― to make you scared. He is running full time on a campaign that is about instilling fear, not about hope, not about optimism, not about the future, but about fear.”

She also returned to a theme she has been emphasizing since she became the Democratic nominee following President Joe Biden’s decision to end his reelection campaign in July: that Trump’s loud and domineering affect, designed to project strength, actually reveals the opposite.

“Donald Trump, through his way of trying to name-call and demean and divide, tries to project as though those things are a sign of strength when, in fact, the man is really quite weak. He’s weak,” she said. “This man is weak, and he is unfit.”

Trump denigrated Michigan’s largest city last week during a rambling, nearly three-hour speech at the Detroit Economic Club, where he suggested the city is crime ridden and dangerous. “Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president,” he warned.

Leaders of Detroit and Michigan generally roundly pushed back against Trump, pointing out the city’s decrease in crime and improved economic condition in recent years, calling it a success story for other cities to emulate.

Charlamagne, who co-hosts a popular radio show called “The Breakfast Club,” went even further, saying that what Trump really meant was that electing Harris would make the country more “Black,” which in Trump’s view was obviously a bad thing.

“When Trump says the whole country is going to become like Detroit if she becomes president, he’s telling folks that they need to fear America becoming too Black,” he said on his radio show Friday, the morning after Trump’s speech.

On Tuesday, Harris agreed with that assessment. “He has a tendency to mention cities that either have a historically Black majority population or a Black mayor.

Both Trump and Harris are scheduled to return to Michigan later in the week.