Trump says Detroit makes U.S. a ‘developing nation’

Donald Trump further denigrated Detroit while appealing for votes Saturday in a suburb of the largest city in swing state Michigan.

“I think Detroit and some of our areas makes us a developing nation,” the former president told supporters in Novi. He said people want him to say Detroit is “great,” but he thinks it “needs help.”

During his rally, Trump spotlighted local Muslim and Arab American leaders who joined him on stage. These voters “could turn the election one way or the other,” Trump said, adding that he was banking on ”overwhelming support” from those voters in Michigan.

“When President Trump was president, it was peace,” said one of those leaders, Mayor Bill Bazzi of Dearborn Heights. “We didn’t have any issues. There was no wars.”

While Trump is trying to capitalize on the community’s frustration with the Democratic administration, he has a history of policies hostile to this group, including a travel ban targeting Muslim countries while in office and a pledge to expand it to include refugees from Gaza if he wins on Nov. 5.

A Trump ally, Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the grandson of Lebanese immigrants, told reporters that Trump was winning over support from more Arab Americans and has cultivated relationships with leaders in the Middle East that would bring more stability to the region.

Michelle Obama: Trump term would be assault on women’s safety

Michelle Obama challenged men to support Kamala Harris’ bid to be America’s first female president, warning at a rally in Michigan on Saturday that women’s lives would be at risk if Donald Trump returned to the White House.

The former first lady described the assault on abortion rights as the harbinger of dangerous limitations on healthcare for women. Some men may be tempted to vote for Trump because of their anger at the slow pace of progress, Obama said, but “your rage does not exist in a vacuum.”

”If we don’t get this election right, your wife, your daughter, your mother, we as women will become collateral damage to your rage,” Obama said. “So are you as men prepared to look into the eyes of the women and children you love and tell them you supported this assault on our safety?”

The rally in Kalamazoo was Obama’s first appearance on the campaign trail since she spoke at the Democratic National Convention over the summer, and her remarks were searing and passionate in their support of Harris.

Trump lawyers call for documents case to remain dismissed

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump have urged a federal appeals court to uphold the dismissal of the classified documents case against him, saying a judge was correct in ruling that the prosecutor who brought the charges was illegally appointed.

The case charging Trump with hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida had long been seen as legally perilous for the Republicans’ White House nominee, but U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed it in July after concluding that special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment to the job was unlawful.

The ruling brought an abrupt halt to the case, ensuring there would be no trial before the November presidential election. Another case brought by Smith, this one charging Trump with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election, was delayed by a Supreme Court opinion conferring broad immunity on former presidents.

Smith’s team has appealed the documents decision, calling the ruling by Cannon, who was nominated for the bench by Trump, contrary to decades of precedent. If allowed to stand, prosecutors say, the ruling would call into question the legality of hundreds of appointments across the executive branch.

Trump’s team responded with its own filing late Friday, telling the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to leave Cannon’s ruling in place.

Trump repeatedly calls Anderson Cooper by a woman’s name

Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly referred to CNN anchor Anderson Cooper with a woman’s first name in recent days as the Republican presidential nominee focuses his closing message on a hypermasculine appeal to men.

On a Friday morning post on Trump’s social media site Truth Social, the former president referred to one of the most prominent openly gay journalists in the U.S. as “Allison Cooper.”

Trump made the subtext even more explicit later Friday during a rally in Traverse City, Michigan, where he criticized a town hall Cooper hosted with Vice President Kamala Harris.

“If you watched her being interviewed by Allison Cooper the other night, he’s a nice person. You know Allison Cooper? CNN fake news,” Trump said, before pausing and saying in a mocking voice: “Oh, she said no, his name is Anderson. Oh, no.”

On Saturday, Trump repeated the name during another Michigan rally, then followed it up during a nighttime reference in Pennsylvania. “They had a town hall,” Trump said in Michigan. “Even Allison Cooper was embarrassed by it. He was embarrassed by it.”

In referring to Cooper with a woman’s name, Trump appeared to turn to a stereotype of gay men as feminine, one heterosexual people have long deployed.

— From news services