Trump was faced with the irony of being honored as the Man of the Decade in a Michigan county that he had twice lost in subsequent elections.
This is because when former President Donald Trump returned to the state, his goal was to reclaim territory that had previously supported him in winning the White House.
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Trump spoke on Sunday in suburban Detroit, where he lost ground between 2016 and 2020 and would need to regain it if he becomes the Republican nominee in 2024. He was campaigning for a return to the presidency while facing a federal indictment for allegedly mishandling classified documents.
He would need to reverse the recent Democratic gains in Michigan, which have been some of the largest in the country since Trump’s defeat in the election.
Trump gave a speech at the Lincoln Day Dinner of the Oakland County Republican Party, where the party named him its Man of the Decade. Throughout his speech on Sunday, Trump made several disparaging remarks about President Joe Biden, describing the Democrat as a “catastrophe” for the auto industry in Michigan.
Additionally, Trump criticized Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a co-chair of Biden’s reelection campaign, for approving funds for a foreign company from the state budget.
Michigan was one of three states that flipped in 2016 to put Trump in the White House and Vice President Biden four years later, along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. This was Trump’s first campaign appearance in Michigan.
Since 2016, Trump’s popularity in Michigan has declined.
“To become president, Trump needs to win Michigan once more, according to his calculations. However, he has been extremely disruptive here,” stated Dave Trott, a former Republican congressman. Trump is largely to blame for the demise of the Michigan Republican Party.
Trump’s Michigan-endorsed candidates were among the loudest last year when they repeated his unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 election was rigged.
Matthew DePerno, Trump’s choice for attorney general, was under investigation throughout the final months of his campaign to determine whether he should face criminal charges for attempting to access voting machines following the 2020 election.
Kristina Karamo, the Republican nominee for secretary of state and a former community college professor, was selected by Trump after Trump claimed that she saw election fraud as a poll challenger in Detroit.
The statewide candidates he supported were overwhelmingly defeated in November, including Tudor Dixon, who was defeated by Whitmer by more than ten percentage points.
From 2011 to 2019, Republicans ruled at all levels of the state government in Michigan. For the first time in forty years, they are now powerless. Oakland County, which has the most Republican voters in the state, has seen the most of the change.
Trott stated, “People who know electoral politics in Michigan would say that if Republicans are going to carry the state, they need to win Oakland County.”
Biden won the state by about 155,000 votes, or 2.8 percentage points, while Trump lost the county in 2016 and 2020. Biden received nearly 100,000 more votes than Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton did in the county.
Trott, who served as a representative for Oakland County in the United States House of Representatives from 2015 to 2019, initially supported Trump in 2016 but later stated that he was “unfit for office.” Twenty-five legislators have already publicly endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president, indicating that Trump’s support among Republicans in the Legislature has decreased. Trump stated on Sunday that DeSantis’ campaign is “falling like a rock” and that the candidate has “no personality.”
However, there has been no change in support for Trump among state GOP officials. Following her 14% defeat in the midterms, Republican precinct delegates selected Karamo to lead the party in February. A vote to alter the state’s traditional method of allocating all presidential delegates based on a public primary was one of the new party leadership’s first actions.
Michigan will award just 16 of the state’s 55 delegates based on the primary results on February 27 under a new plan widely anticipated to benefit Trump. Four days later, party members who chose Karamo to lead the party will hold closed-door caucus meetings where the remaining 39 delegates will be distributed.
“The plan gives Trump a big advantage over the other candidates. According to Jason Cabel Roe, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party, “He’s a grassroots favorite in the state, and he’s made Michigan his political playground for the last seven years.”
In an interview, Karamo told The Associated Press that she would remain impartial in the primary. She asserts that the Republican National Committee’s rules were broken when Michigan Democrats voted to move the state’s primary from the second week of March to Feb. 27, which could have cost the party delegates.
Karamo did not respond when asked if Trump or his team had lobbied for the change in the presidential primary. She said she does not engage in “discussions with the various campaigns.”
“We want to protect the voice of Michigan voters. So whether or not it may help one candidate over another, that’s totally irrelevant,” Karamo said.
Karamo claims that the Michigan GOP “worked on” the strategy with the RNC and anticipates that the national party will endorse the new primary format.
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“Focused on rules and process rather than the substance and language of Karamo’s specific plan — the kind of guidance they offer each state party as they begin to formulate their individual paths forward for delegate selection,” the RNC stated in its conversations with the state party.
In a statement, RNC spokesperson Emma Vaughn said, “We look forward to reviewing the plans of each state and territory.”
