AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Former President Trump is traveling across the country this week to highlight what he sees as the differences between his campaign and the Harris-Walz ticket. Today, he's in Howell, Mich., about one hour outside Detroit. NPR political correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben is in Michigan and was just at that Trump event. She joins us now. Hi, Danielle.

DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE: Hey, Ailsa.

CHANG: OK, so what message would you say the Trump campaign is sending today?

KURTZLEBEN: Well, today he was talking about crime, and he spoke at a county sheriff's department, so really underscoring that message with the setting. He was trying to make the case that crime would be lower under him as president than under President Biden and then it would be under a theoretical President Harris. Now, in this speech, he talked about a few things. He talked about giving police immunity from prosecution and also about giving more funding to law enforcement, and those are both things that he has advocated for in the past.

He also leaned heavily into crime committed by undocumented immigrants. Really, this was a crime speech, but it was also an immigration speech. And that said, this being Trump, he covered a lot more topics than crime. He meandered a bit. He talked about Afghanistan, he talked about the economy, and he attacked Kamala Harris personally.

CHANG: OK. Well, of course, the Democratic convention is happening right now, and there were a lot of attacks on Trump last night at the convention. So did he have any responses to that?

KURTZLEBEN: Oh, yes. He cited a few speeches specifically. He made it clear that he watched. But also, he made this really broad attack about the whole first night of the DNC.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DONALD TRUMP: I watched last night in amazement as they tried to pretend that everything was great - the crime was great, the border was great. There wasn't a problem at all, no inflation, no nothing.

KURTZLEBEN: So really there trying to attack Democrats on their big message of joy and unity and positivity. In recent events, Trump has really been leaning into negativity, really making the case that the country is bad right now and that he would be the person to make it good, sometimes today getting into downright lurid descriptions of rape and other violent crimes.

Now, one other thing - you could hear from that clip there, this wasn't rally Trump today. He was pretty subdued compared to the Trump that we're used to seeing on TV. Now, that may have been the smallest venue he chose. He just didn't have the big crowd to feed off of.

CHANG: Oh, that's interesting. Well, all of this is part of a sweep through different swing states that Trump is doing this week, right? Like, one might call it his counterprogramming of the DNC. Tell us more about his plans this week as the DNC is going on.

KURTZLEBEN: Sure. So he's been doing a few events like this, and the events thus far haven't been huge. He did a small event at a manufacturing business in York, Pa., yesterday. Today, he was in a - what an officer told me was a storage building at a local sheriff's department. There were maybe, besides press, a hundred, 200 people, a pretty small event compared to a typical Trump rally.

And each of these events has a theme. Yesterday it was the economy. Today it was crime. Tomorrow he and his running mate, JD Vance will be in Asheboro, N.C., talking about national security, and later the week - in the week, he will hit Arizona to talk about immigration. The goal of all of these seems to be to hit Kamala Harris and Tim Walz on areas where they think that those Democrats are weak.

CHANG: Do we know how Trump is choosing the specific places he's speaking at this week?

KURTZLEBEN: We don't really, and I was curious about that. I asked the Trump team in particular why he went to Howell, Mich., today because Howell is a town of around 10,000. It's a place that a lot of people might not have heard of. And the Trump team didn't give me a direct answer, but you can surmise a few things. First of all, all these events are in swing states, and Trump just does better in rural areas. This area in Michigan is also where representative Elissa Slotkin is from. She is the Michigan Senate candidate.

Now, critics have noted that Howell has historic ties to the KKK. White supremacist demonstrated there last month. However, when a reporter shouted a question about that today, Trump pointed out that Biden spoke in Howell in 2021.

CHANG: That is NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben. Thank you, Danielle.

KURTZLEBEN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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