Former President Donald J. Trump, courting Black voters at a church on the west side of Detroit on Saturday, sought to harness animus toward migrants crossing the border, sanitized his track record on race and sold himself as the best president for Black Americans since Abraham Lincoln.
As he spoke to roughly 200 people, Mr. Trump largely ignored his history of racist statements and his decades of calls for tougher policing that have fueled his three presidential campaigns.
Instead, during short remarks before a panel with Black residents of Detroit at the city’s 180 Church, Mr. Trump tried to cast Mr. Biden as anti-Black, focusing intently on the president’s role in shepherding the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, a sweeping bill that criminal justice experts have said laid the groundwork for mass incarceration that disproportionately hurt America’s Black communities.
Mr. Trump, at one point, seemed determined to ensure that Mr. Biden’s role in the crime bill would be the event’s main takeaway. He falsely accused Mr. Biden of coining the term “super predators” and then insisted that those in the audience should not forget Mr. Biden’s role, as a U.S. senator, in championing the bill and helping it get passed.
“He was the one with the super predators,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Biden. “So just please remember that if you’re going to vote Democrat — because you shouldn’t vote Democrat.”
