Kwame Kilpatrick (File photo from Movemental Ministries)
Ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has good reason to praise Donald Trump. In January 2021, then-President Trump commuted his 28-year prison sentence to time served. He ended up serving nearly eight years.
Last week, Kilpatrick spoke at Steven Lelli's Inn on the Green, an upscale Farmington Hills restaurant, at a forum titled, "Let Us Reason Together: Our Faith, Our Values, Our Politics." The owner of the restaurant is a big Trump supporter.
Speaking before a predominately Black audience, Kilpatrick, 54, urged the group to resist peer pressure and publicly proclaim their support for Trump, according to a Detroit Free Press column by M.L. Elrick.
Kilpatrick told the crowd that he met with Trump and, "he's a real cool guy for sure. Real cool, real comfortable. But he's smart."
Elrick also writes:
Kilpatrick told his audience there are many reasons he supports Trump. Like Apostle Ellis Smith, the evening's co-host, Kilpatrick hit on conservative flashpoints like gender identity. He said the Democratic Party he helped lead while serving in the Michigan House of Representatives from 1997 to 2002 "doesn't exist anymore" and that he was shocked Democrats supported laws that said children don't have to talk to their parents before seeking a sex change. He said he never would have let such a law pass when he was a legislator, adding, "we have come to a transformational time."
Kilpatrick said style is another reason young Black men are turning to an old white man (Trump is 78).
"Because people like somebody to be real," he said, adding that Trump "is saying it in a way like we're in the back of the house talking."
Elrick last Monday night with Kilpatrick and Anthony Gusumano
Elrick and fellow Free Press reporter Jim Schaefer won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for exposing Kilpatrick's sexting scandal that led to him stepping down as mayor.
Elrick in his column titled, "Detroit waits for restitution from Kwame Kilpatrick while he pays back Donald Trump," also writes:
It's been about a decade since the former mayor of Detroit and I were in the same room — which is roughly the same amount of time that has passed since Kilpatrick last made a payment on the $1 million he agreed to remunerate Detroit. He still owes us more than $854,000 of the restitution that was part of his plea deal to settle criminal charges stemming from the 2008 text message scandal in which Kilpatrick used more than $8 million in taxpayer money to cover up his affair with his chief of staff. Hizzoner owes Uncle Sam much more...
To read the full column, click here.
Elrick also discusses the event on his podcast, ML Soul of Detroit.
