Leftist filmmaker Michael Moore told MSNBC’s Joy Reid that Americans “should be so grateful [if] they end up like Detroit.” Moore was responding to questions from the host of The ReidOut, who claimed that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was “insulting Detroit workers” at a recent appearance.

The former president had said frankly that the country would resemble Detroit if Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris is victorious in November’s presidential election. “I mean, the whole country is going to be like — you want to know the truth — it’ll be like Detroit… Our whole country will end up being like Detroit,” he said.

Moore attacked Trump for his words, saying, “Over the weekend, he told the wives of Michigan to get your fat husbands off the couch to go vote. And it's like, He says … America is going to end up like Detroit,” Moore said.

“America should be so grateful that they end up like Detroit. I mean, just especially the way that Detroit has come back, it is coming back absolutely great [with] things that are happening. But there's always that tacit racism involved in statements like that. Oh, you're going to be like Detroit.”

Detroit was once America’s fourth largest and wealthiest city when the US was the automaking capital of the world. Today, after years of sluggish growth and high crime, it has an 8.8 percent unemployment rate that is double the national average and some of the most dangerous neighborhoods of any American city.

Trump recently spoke at the Detroit Economic Club and spoke of offering large tax breaks to companies that make their products in the United States. He promised to bring the manufacturing industry and jobs back to the US, including car manufacturing.