Michigan Democrats are slamming former President Donald Trump for choosing Howell as the location for his rally on Tuesday, a month after white supremacists rallied there, chanting “We love Hitler. We love Trump.”
Trump plans to talk about “crime and safety” at the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office in the town of about 10,000 residents that has been called the “KKK Capital of Michigan.”
Democrats say Trump is fueling racial divisions for political gain.
“It’s no accident that Donald Trump chose to campaign in Howell less than a month after failing to condemn the Neo-Nazis who marched through town shouting their support for Hitler and Trump in the same breath,” Michigan Democratic Party Chairperson Lavora Barnes said in a statement Tuesday afternoon. “His visit here to talk about safety is laughable — violent crime spiked under his watch, and he’s running on an extreme Project 2025 agenda that would defund law enforcement, abolish common-sense gun safety measures, and give Trump unchecked power.”
Barnes added, “Michiganders don’t want a convicted criminal in the White House who will make our communities less safe and stoke hatred and division at every turn — that’s why they will reject Trump and his racist agenda come November.”
And Howell isn’t the only town with links to white supremacists that Trump is visiting. On Monday, Trump visited York, Pennsylvania, which has a long history with the KKK.
On Wednesday, Trump is speaking in Asheboro, North Carolina, where the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan held a rally in 2017. And on Friday, Trump is holding a rally in Glendale, Arizona, which is the global headquarters of the Aryan Nations Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
“This does not seem like a coincidence,” TikTok user and attorney Cheyenne Hunt, who has 99,400 followers, said. “We should all be talking about it. They are making an explicit play for the white supremacist vote.”
On July 20 in Howell, masked white supremacists rallied and chanted, “We love Hitler. We love Trump.” One group chanted “Heil Hitler” during a march. During a second demonstration, participants waved flags with a swastika, the term “KKK,” and other antisemitic messages.
Howell has been linked to the KKK for years, largely because of the rallies Michigan-based Grand Dragon Robert Miles held on a nearby farm in the 1970s and 1980s.
During an appearance before the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago on July 30, Trump came under fire for falsely suggesting his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, had misled voters about her race.
“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” Trump said while addressing the group’s annual convention.
Harris is the daughter of immigrant parents — her father from Jamaica and her mother from India. As an undergraduate, she studied at Howard University, a leading historically Black college, where she joined the historically Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha. During her time as a U.S. senator, Harris was part of the Congressional Black Caucus, advocating for voting rights and police reform legislation.
Trump is scheduled to take the stage in Howell at 3 p.m.
