Pop star Lizzo handed the Trump campaign a gift last week while speaking at a rally supporting Vice President Kamala Harris in Detroit, Michigan.
“I’m so proud to be from Detroit,” the singer said. “They say if Kamala Harris wins, the whole country will be like Detroit. Proud, like Detroit. Resilient like Detroit. The same Detroit that innovated the auto industry and the music industry. Put some respect on Detroit’s name.”
I am not here to trash Detroit. I live in Toledo, Ohio, 50 miles south of the “Big D,” and will always have a soft spot for the history and people of what was once one of the United States’s greatest cities. Detroit was, and in some ways still is, the beating heart of the auto industry. Thanks to Detroit’s artists, from Motown legends Smokey Robinson, The Temptations, and Four Tops to Bob Seger, Glenn Frey, Ted Nugent, and Eminem, Detroit’s impact on the music business will be felt for generations.
The story of Detroit, however, is a tragedy, not a celebration. The hollowing out of the city should be a cautionary tale of what happens when Democrats are left to govern a metropolis without serious opposition.
Lizzo’s comments were in response to former President Donald Trump’s quip that “our whole country will end up being like Detroit if [Harris is] your president.”
Despite the “Trump Derangement Syndrome”-riddled whining from the Left and the press, the “Orange Guy” is right about Detroit. The city has been in decline for a long time.
During the Industrial Revolution, titans of U.S. ingenuity, such as Ford Motor Company, General Motors, and others, turned Detroit into an economic powerhouse. The city’s population peaked in 1950 at nearly 1,850,000 citizens. At the time, the median household income in the city was 13% higher than the national average. Seventy years later, Detroit’s population has fallen to an anemic 639,000 with a median household income of $37,761, around half of the national average of $75,149.
Detroit’s violent crime rate increased dramatically from 1950 to 1991. In the ’70s and ’80s, Detroit was dubbed the “murder capital of America,” and the FBI listed it as the most dangerous city in the nation. Violent crime has decreased over the last decade, but the damage has already been done.
The last Republican to serve as mayor of Detroit was Louis C. Miriani, who lost his reelection bid in 1961. For the last 62 years, Detroit has been governed exclusively by Democrats. Current Detroit Mayor Mike Duggin won reelection comfortably in 2021 with 75.6% of the vote.
Trump has promised a great Detroit comeback if he is elected on Nov. 5.
“Detroit has such great potential, but Kamala and the Democrats have been wreaking havoc on this place,” he said. “It’s a sacred place — so many things happened in Detroit, and it’s been treated so badly. And they’ve been talking about comebacks for so long, but we’re going to bring it back better than it ever was better than it was many, many years ago.”
Of course, Trump’s prescription for an economic revival in the Motor City is off base. His proposed tariff scheme, while favorable to automakers, would raise prices for the middle class, and citizens of Detroit making half of the national median income would be on the business end of such price increases.
There are commonsense measures to be taken to revitalize Detroit and the U.S. auto industry generally. In March of this year, President Joe Biden authorized the largest electric vehicle mandate in history. Under the Biden rule, 67% of new light-duty vehicles and 46% of medium-duty vehicles would be required to be electric by 2032. The only problem? Nobody wants an EV.
Ford Motor Company is expected to lose $5.5 billion in 2024 on EVs and is losing over $100k per EV sold. Keeping the historic automaker afloat is its F-150, which has been the country’s top-selling vehicle for 43 years running. If Detroiters and the Democrats who rule over them would like to see high-paying auto industry jobs return to the area, they should allow Ford to scrap the unpopular Lightning so it can focus on what pays the bills.
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Harris has made it clear that there is no daylight between her policies and those of her elderly boss, and as long as Michiganders continue to elect candidates such as her, mayors such as Duggin, and tyrants such as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), they can expect more of the same policies that reduced the once-great Detroit to economic rubble. Trump may be wrong about the prescription, but he is right that there is a path forward toward a brighter future for Detroit. It would just require its citizens to stop voting for Democrats.
Brady Leonard (@bradyleonard) is a musician, political strategist, and host of The No Gimmicks Podcast.