Donald Trump in Flint
The name Flint used to be synonymous with auto manufacturing. These days it conjures up negative thoughts of a water crisis the population is still dealing with.
That being said, the Detroit Free Press notes that former President Donald Trump on Tuesday held an hour-long town hall meeting but made no mention of the water crisis.
Instead, he talked about talked at length about Michigan manufacturing, two assassination attempts on his life, the southern border and nuclear war.
Paul Egan of the Freep reports:
"You've got someone campaigning for the highest office in the land just ignoring the fact that he's standing in the middle of a city still struggling with all of that, not mentioning it at all," said Melissa Mays, a Flint drinking water activist who did not attend the Tuesday event. "That's terrifying."
Another Flint water activist, Gladyes Williamson, is a strong Trump supporter who did attend Tuesday's "town hall" event. She too said she would have liked to see Trump mention the drinking water crisis, in which government mistakes that included a failure to add corrosion control chemicals when officials switched the source of city residents' drinking water supply to the Flint River from Lake Huron, caused lead — a neurotoxin especially harmful to the developing brains of children — to leach from pipes and fixtures.
On Tuesday, spokeswomen for both the Trump and Harris campaigns expressed support for Flint and safe drinking water generally and touted actions their administrations had taken in those areas. But the two campaigns would not say whether their candidates, if elected, would direct the EPA to stop arguing that it is immune from civil liability and make a financial settlement with Flint residents. The EPA is charged with ensuring compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act and a paper trail shows its officials knew about dangerously inadequate treatment of water from the Flint River months before residents were notified.
