Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) defended former President Donald Trump for holding a rally in the same Michigan town where a group of neo-Nazis gathered a month before.
Donalds held a press conference on Tuesday at the Trump Tower hotel in Chicago in which he criticized Vice President Kamala Harris’s record of being in favor of defunding the police and batted away accusations about white supremacy within the Trump campaign because of where it chose to hold an event on Tuesday.
Near the end of the press conference, Donalds was asked about why Trump decided to host a rally in Howell, Michigan, the same town that saw a group of pro-Nazis carrying swastika banners with the message “we love Hitler” written on them last month.
Donalds dismissed insinuations that Trump chose Howell to win over voters who were sympathetic to the white nationalists.
“There are good Americans in every city, so President Trump decides to go somewhere to see the people who have been struggling under the terrible policies of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and he chooses to rally,” Donalds said. “That is the decision to support those people who love this country, who love our Constitution, who want all people to thrive, to succeed. Any neo-Nazi crazy person that throws up swastikas, I don’t want nothing to do with them, and neither does President Trump.”
The town of 10,000 has been linked to white supremacist hate groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, since the 1970s, with Grand Dragon Robert Miles having a mailing address in the town and also holding meetings in a nearby farm.
Associate professor of political science at Michigan State University Nazita Lajevardi said the former president’s decision to hold the rally in Howell was intentional and linked to appeasing the support of white supremacists.
"It begs the question: why there, why now?" Lajevardi told Reuters. "The timing is important, the symbolism is important, and it can't just be seen in a vacuum."
Trump campaign spokesman Brian Hughes told the Washington Examiner that the criticism of Trump's trip to Howell laid out a clear double standard by the media, which didn't question President Joe Biden when he went there in 2021.
"The same framing of that question could go to the Democrats, but of course, they're not really taking questions," Hughes said. "They're in a city surrounded by antisemitic, anti-Jewish protesters. They're going to blue cities and blue states throughout their campaign, talking in the same cities where antisemitic protesters took over college campuses."
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"I think their answer would be the same," Hughes continued. "There are good, good people in every community in this country. And a community shouldn't be cast aside by a political campaign because of abhorrent remarks of a select few."
Trump’s speech in Howell was focused on crime and safety issues. The former president's campaign told Reuters it had chosen Howell since the town is located within the swing state of Michigan and Livingston County Sheriff Michael Murphy is a supporter of the campaign.
Christian Datoc contributed to this report.
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