When former President Donald Trump visited Detroit over the weekend, he went through his usual spiel about how the Motor City was overrun with crime and poverty that he alone could fix.
However, The Atlantic's David Frum contends that Trump's rhetoric about Detroit is at odds with its reality, as the city has been undergoing something of a renaissance that Frum contends is symbolized by the total reconstruction of the city's Michigan Central Station.
Although Frum acknowledges that the station was in major disrepair as recently as a decade ago, he notes that major investment from the Ford Motor Company has restored it to its past glory.
What's more, writes Frum, the reopening of the station isn't the only good news that's been happening in Detroit in recent months.
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"The reopening of the station capped a year of good news for Detroit," Frum contends. "In 2023, the city’s population grew for the first time since 1957. Crime in the city plunged, with double-digit drops in carjackings and shootings—and the fewest homicides since 1966. Home prices rose faster than in any other city in the nation, surpassing the annual gain of more than 8 percent set by the previous front-runner, Miami. Detroit remains a troubled place, certainly. But for the first time in a long while, its trajectory is clearly going up, not down."
Frum then circles back to Trump, whom he accuses of completely distorting the reality of the United States of America at the moment to benefit his presidential campaign.
"As Detroit’s improvement is real, so Trump’s Detroit event was fake," writes Frum. "Trump’s team, and some stenographic news reports, described the event as taking place in a 'Black church,' leaving the impression that he spoke to a church congregation. One of Trump’s talkers claimed that 8,000 people attended the event in a building that holds only a few hundred people when all the pews are full, which they weren’t.
"Trump’s media allies insinuated that the crowd was mostly made up of Black worshippers; the TV cameras showed a crowd that seemed at least half white and was apparently nonlocal. The contrast between the reality of reviving Detroit and the falseness of Trump’s self-advertising symbolizes a challenge for voters and the media in this year’s presidential election."
