Pop quiz: Answer quickly and honestly.
Do you want your community to be more like Detroit, or less?
Good journalists, if Michigan had them, would have asked that question after Donald Trump’s speech Thursday at the Detroit Economic Club.
“You wanna know the truth?” Trump told the crowd. “Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president.”
This was Trump’s closing argument to a group of suburban businessmen gathered in the city center: Don’t Detroit My America.
Inside the room, and across Metro Detroit, this was a sentiment recognized as true—even if everybody loves the Tigers. There’s a reason Detroit has lost a million people since the 1950s and why suburbanites aren’t flooding back. Detroit is not a good city, to put it kindly.
There are less-kind ways to say this. Let’s get into it.
As noted by Khalil AlHajal of the Detroit Free Press, “Trump did not elaborate on what he meant.” That didn’t stop AlHajal from writing a too-long column attempting to argue that the joke was on Trump, actually.
The pile-on that followed was so predictable that Grok could’ve done better work in less time. White people who make their homes in Howell or Royal Oak or Grosse Pointe play-acted as offended that Trump criticized a city they’d never move to. A city they only experience through their car windows as they head straight home.
“We’ve got record low homicide rates and we’re growing our population for the first time since the 1950s,” Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said on Instagram. “And Detroit’s done all of it without a bit of help from Donald Trump.”
Yes, Detroit, the second most dangerous city in America, is so safe that the city closed its riverside parks during the Ford Fireworks on Belle Isle. VIPs on Belle Isle could enjoy the riverfront fireworks. Everybody else could watch on TV.
Duggan’s caution seemed irrational at the time, given those “record low homicide rates.” It was justified a week later, when 21 people were shot at once at a block party.
Duggan used that crisis as an opportunity to portray block parties as the real problem in Detroit. All the city needed, Duggan insisted, was common-sense block-party control.
Tough place to be a citizen, Detroit.
Tough place to be wrongfully convicted, too. Over at the Metro Times, Motor City Muckraker Steve Neavling reports that efforts to unravel wrongful convictions in Wayne County are hitting a wall: a lack of available documents.
There was a document purge during Duggan’s time as Wayne County Prosecutor, Neavling reports. It’s nearly impossible to find files from criminal cases before 1995. No less than Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy joined Neavling in sounding the alarm.
Duggan denied the whole thing, and said the documents were under the custody of the Wayne County Building Department, which back then was run by Warren Evans.
Today, Evans is Wayne County Executive.
How many deferred dreams of freedom are running into roadblocks that trace back to Detroit’s mayor, and the Wayne County executive?
So spare us your offense, Mr. Mayor. Detroit is a clown car, and you are the driver.
This is a city that can’t educate its children or protect its citizens. It’s a city that only thought to put up fancy freeway signs when out-of-town visitors came for the NFL Draft. It would never do such a thing for actual Detroiters.
This is a city where 95% of 8th graders can’t read at grade level.
Kids who can’t read grow up to commit armed robberies at dollar stores that keep only $30 in the register at a time because they can’t read the signs that say so.
The people who rob people at bus stops aren’t saving up tuition for Harvard. They were failed by their schools and don’t know how to survive.
And so their every interaction is something between a roll of the dice and a trigger pull in Russian roulette. It ends in one of two places: prison or death.
This is what awaits a kid who cannot read. Detroit produces more of them than any Michigan city. Imagine being offended at what Trump said instead of reading to one of those kids. By our fruits we are known. Detroit reflects the investment level and the values of the people who live there and the people who run the place. Detroit might be called the Comeback City, but nobody on this side of honesty would say it has come back.
Detroit’s motto a century ago was: “Where Life Is Worth Living.” Since the 1967 riots the city’s unofficial motto has been: “Detroit: I Do Mind Dying.”
Detroit is overrun with activists fighting grievances in political representation, crime, education, and public health. The harder suburbanites try to defend Detroit, the more they show how little they care.
You can love Detroit and its people. Who doesn’t root for the underdog?
But if you can’t admit that Detroit is a deeply troubled place, you don’t love Detroit or its people.
You just like wearing the T-shirt.
James David Dickson is host of the Enjoyer Podcast. Join him in conversation on X @downi75.
