Politics

Trump trashes Detroit, while delivering a speech in Detroit

Published

2 years ago

November 11, 2024

Trump trashes Detroit, while delivering a speech in Detroit

When Donald Trump spoke to congressional Republicans in June, the former president apparently thought it’d be a good idea to trash Wisconsin’s largest city. Milwaukee, the GOP candidate told his allies behind closed doors, is a “horrible” city that’s overrun by crime.

Trump’s timing could’ve been better: He slammed Milwaukee just weeks before the city would host the Republican National Convention.

But at least in this instance, the former president trashed the city before arriving there. During Trump’s remarks at the Detroit Economic Club, the GOP nominee was more direct in his insults. The Washington Post reported:

In bashing Vice President Kamala Harris in his remarks to the Detroit Economic Club Thursday, Donald Trump also insulted the city hosting him. “Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s the president,” Trump said. “You’re gonna have a mess on your hands.”

“The whole country will be like, you want to know the truth? It’ll be like Detroit. Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president. … We’re not going to let her do that to this country. We’re not gonna let it happen.”

It’s possible that Trump simply forgot during his improvised comments that he was in Detroit while he was disparaging the city. The former president did, after all, recently relish “a great day in Louisiana” after spending the day in Georgia.

It’s also possible that the GOP nominee knew where he was, and he simply didn’t care whether he was insulting his hosts’ hometown or not.

Either way, Mike Duggan, the city’s Democratic mayor, quickly responded online that crime is down in Detroit and the local population is growing for the first time in several decades. “Lots of cities should be like Detroit,” the mayor wrote“and we did it all without Trump’s help.”

Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan’s Democratic governor, had a similar message around the same time, writing online“Detroit is the epitome of ‘grit,’ defined by winners willing to get their hands dirty to build up their city and create their communities — something Donald Trump could never understand. So keep Detroit out of your mouth. And you better believe Detroiters won’t forget this in November.”

This probably isn’t the “let Detroit go bankrupt” line that undermined Mitt Romney’s presidential hopes in Michigan eight years ago, but it’s not that far off, either.

If you’re thinking that local voters will be hearing a lot about Trump’s rhetoric between now and Election Day, you’re not the only one.

Steve Benen

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

Politics

World Cup fuels ticketing reform demands

Published

10 hours ago

June 21, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Demands are growing for a political reckoning over ticket scams at the World Cup — and beyond.

The National Independent Venue Association and Fan Alliance, organizations representing and advocating for entertainment venues and artists respectively, sent a joint letter to Congress on Thursday, calling on lawmakers to ban speculative and ghost tickets, cases where resellers flog tickets they don’t actually have.

The letter — addressed to Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer — includes nearly two dozen accounts of fans who say they were scammed out of thousands of dollars trying to get tickets to the World Cup, which began last week. The groups are also asking fans to share their own stories with elected officials via the Fix the Tix Fan Action Center that launched last week.

“Every one of these stories erodes the public’s faith that consumers should and will be protected from fraud,” NIVA Executive Director Stephen Parker and Fan Alliance founder Donald Cohen wrote. “We urge Congress to work with us to prevent fraud like this in the future and finally enact ticket resale consumer protections that will protect Americans and ensure affordability.”

The letter flagged fans like Dacy Gillespie, who bought World Cup tickets for her sons on Christmas, only to learn on match day — months later — that the seller couldn’t deliver them. And Skylie Shore, who Parker and Cohen said spent well over $6,000 on tickets to the Scotland-Haiti match on June 13, but was forced to wait outside the stadium because she couldn’t access them as fans marched in on gameday.

“These examples reveal a consistent pattern: consumer deception, speculative ticket sales, and broken-hearted American families at the hands of resale ticketing companies like StubHub,” Parker and Cohen wrote.

In a statement, StubHub spokesperson Jack Sterne said that the platform does not allow speculative ticket sales, and blamed FIFA for users’ difficulty in accessing their tickets.

“We understand that attending the World Cup represents a significant investment in time and money, and we take our responsibility to every fan who books through our platform seriously,” Sterne said in a statement. “Many of the issues fans are facing trace back to the event organizer’s technology infrastructure, newly announced transfer restrictions, and a new app that was launched just a month ago.”

In response, FIFA said in a statement that the organization “can guarantee the validity and delivery of tickets purchased through its official platforms” and that FIFA.com/tickets “is the official ticket sales channel” for the tournament.

NIVA and Fan Alliance are urging congressional leadership to place universal price-gouging limits on ticket resale, enact stringent fines on perpetrators and a violation-reporting mechanism for ticket scams, and require secondary ticketing platforms to produce data on ticket fulfillment and consumer complaints.

The groups are not the only ones monitoring for evidence of shady ticket practices. Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway issued a consumer guidance in advance of the tournament, urging match-goers to beware of fraud and promising to hold offenders accountable. And the FBI in May put out a public service announcement, warning fans against purchasing tickets on copycat websites modeled on FIFA’s.

“With the World Cup coming to Kansas City, excitement is high and, unfortunately, so is the potential for fraud,” Hanaway said in her statement. “Missourians should be able to enjoy this once-in-a-generation event without fear of being deceived. My office will hold accountable anyone who seeks to exploit our families, and we stand ready to assist anyone who encounters suspicious activity.”