Trump dismisses likability as a key election issue

Former President Trump on Tuesday argued his tough-on-crime approach would be the key to winning over suburban women in November, dismissing the importance of likability.

Trump delivered remarks on crime during a campaign event in Howell, Mich., where he painted a dystopian picture of crime in America. The former president claimed migrants and criminals were overrunning U.S. cities and suburbs, and he disputed statistics that have shown crime declining under the Biden administration.

“When I return to the White House we will stop the plunder, rape, slaughter and destruction of our American suburbs, our cities and towns,” Trump said. 

“I think women living in the suburbs … why wouldn’t they like me? I keep the suburbs safe. I stopped low-income towers from rising right alongside of their house. And I’m keeping the illegal aliens away from the suburbs. I think that they like me a lot. I think it’s a lot of fake polls,” Trump said.

“Women want to have safety. They want to have a strong military. They want to have a strong police force,” he continued. “They want to be in their house and they want to be safe. … I hope they like my personality. I have a nice personality. But to me, it wouldn’t be very important, the personality.”

Suburban women are expected to once again play a key role in November’s election. It is a group Trump has struggled to win over in the past, with strategists at times arguing Trump’s incendiary rhetoric has played a factor.

President Biden in 2020 won 50 percent of suburban voters and 57 percent of female voters, beating Trump by 2 percentage points in the former category and 15 percentage points among the latter group, according to exit polls.

An NBC News poll published in February found Biden leading Trump among suburban women by 6 percentage points, 49-43.

There is limited polling data available on how Trump stacks up against Vice President Harris, who replaced Biden as the Democratic nominee in late July. But recent polls have shown Harris faring better than Biden with women overall, helping her erase Trump’s lead nationally and in battleground states.

Trump on Tuesday spoke in Michigan as part of a multiday swing through battleground states to counter the Democratic National Convention. The focus of his remarks was crime, and he repeatedly attacked Harris as a radical liberal and attempted to tie her to the crime problems facing San Francisco, where she served as district attorney from 2004 to 2011.

Harris during her own 2020 presidential campaign praised local officials who were rethinking how to provide funding for police departments, but her 2024 campaign has since tried to establish distance from those views.

The former president also highlighted a series of crimes allegedly committed by migrants in a bid to connect the issue to Harris and the Biden administration’s handling of the southern border.

While Trump sought to frame crime as out of control under the Biden administration, FBI statistics showed violent crime dropped considerably in the first months of 2024 compared to the same time last year.

The Biden administration has also highlighted federal funding for local police departments to counter claims from Trump and other Republicans that Democrats want to defund the police, a movement that began following the murder of George Floyd in 2020 by a police officer.