“Horrible city”: Trump kicks off the RNC’s inevitable Milwaukee-bashing
We all knew it was coming.
The Recombobulation Area is a thirteen-time Milwaukee Press Club award-winning weekly opinion column and online publication founded by longtime Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer. Learn more about it here.
The Republican National Convention will be coming to Milwaukee in just 32 days. To mark the occasion, former president Donald Trump called Milwaukee a “horrible city.”
Jake Sherman of Punchbowl News reported this morning that, in a meeting with House Republicans, Donald Trump said, “Milwaukee, where we are having our convention, is a horrible city.”
CNN also reported that the former president called Milwaukee “horrible,” in what was characterized as Trump being “off topic” in a closed-door meeting at the Capitol, his first time returning to the area since Jan. 6, 2021. Another report from NOTUS quoted a source saying the meeting was “like talking to your drunk uncle at the family reunion.”
Trump going off and calling Milwaukee a "horrible city" is a pitch perfect way to kick off the inevitable Milwaukee-bashing from Republicans that will surely be a hallmark of the GOP Convention. Everyone in the city knew this would happen, and now it's happening.
Disdain like this from Republicans directed at Wisconsin’s largest, most diverse city is nothing new. It’s essentially a cornerstone belief of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, both in words and actions. By welcoming the RNC to Milwaukee, we are also welcoming this type of Milwaukee-bashing to the city. When one of the primary reasons RNC boosters have given for hosting the convention is to “raise the city’s profile,” it’s these very comments that will invariably complicate those goals.
Republicans are going to treat Milwaukee the way they always treat Milwaukee. The city’s well-meaning cartographers who want to put Milwaukee on the map (ON THE MAP!) have appeared incapable of recognizing just what kind of rhetoric about Milwaukee that Republicans are going to broadcast to the world when the convention comes to town. As these comments today reveal, those goals of putting the city in a positive light for the world to see have already failed. If only this weren’t all so predictable.
Just as predictable is the bumbling, incoherent, all-over-the-place response from Wisconsin’s Republican congressional delegation and GOP host committee. The tilt-a-whirl spin has already resulted in five different versions of Trump calling Milwaukee a “terrible city.”
Rep. Bryan Steil tweeted “I was in the room. President Trump did not say this.” But Rep. Glenn Grothman told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Lawrence Andrea that this had to do with “the election in Milwaukee.” Rep. Derrick Van Orden said this had to do with crime in Milwaukee. But Rep. Tom Tiffany said Trump didn’t say anything about crime, but his remarks had to do with “election integrity.” Rep. Scott Fitzgerald backed the claim about “election integrity.” And in yet another spin, a spokesperson from the GOP Convention told CBS 58’s Adam Rife that Trump’s comments were about the disputed location of the protest zone in downtown Milwaukee. Later in the day, Trump himself attempted to explain this away by talking about “the election,” alluding to his ongoing conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential elections. This isn’t any better. Trump has lied about the 2020 election results in Milwaukee countless times and has been proven wrong over and over and over and over again. Our votes in Milwaukee counted in 2020. Trump lost Wisconsin. These are simple facts.
The extent to which Republicans are twisting in the wind about a belief that is so central to the ideology of the Wisconsin GOP is pretty ridiculous. Because what Trump said about Milwaukee is nothing new. Calling this city “horrible” is right in line with how Republicans treat the city.
Three years ago this month, Stephen A. Smith and the hosts at ESPN’s “First Take” whipped up a frenzy by calling Milwaukee a “terrible city.” As Milwaukee Record’s Matt Wild points out, “Milwaukee went into meltdown mode for a full year” when that happened. But as I noted at the time, if you think what “First Take” said about Milwaukee was bad, just wait until you hear what Republican state legislators and their talk radio allies say about our city every day.
This is just part of our politics, part of our lives living in Milwaukee. Republicans in our state legislature dump on and defund Milwaukee. They erroneously question the legitimacy of our votes and try to overturn them entirely. Wisconsin’s rural-urban divide has been amplified and exploited by state Republicans who take action often at odds with Milwaukee’s priorities, often crafting zero sum game policies that actively make the city worse.
It should be noted, too, that other cities who were in the running for the RNC rejected hosting the convention on the same grounds of what’s now coming to fruition in Milwaukee. In a 2022 column here at The Recombobulation Area, Marquette professor Phil Rocco wrote about how the city of Nashville was working to reject the convention, with Councilmember Angie Henderson quoted as saying “It would be nice to believe that if we were to take on the mutual burden of hosting this convention, Republican leadership would call off their ‘this-blue-city-is-a-crime-ridden-woke-failure’ hounds making a sport of deriding Nashville in the media.” But Milwaukee, as I detailed in a column last month, had its own political bargain to strike, and saying yes to the RNC helped achieve those goals. Now, we have to begrudgingly welcome this convention to Milwaukee and hope the rhetoric from the former president and his party don’t cause lasting harm to the city. More importantly now, though, are the rising safety concerns over welcoming a party who thinks your city is “horrible” and will be permitted to bring guns to the convention.
And look, we know Milwaukee has its struggles. But so does every other municipality, from the largest cities to the smallest villages. That doesn’t take away the greatness of any of those places, and certainly not Milwaukee. Those of us who live here are abundantly aware of the challenges this city faces, and many of us are working hard to make this an even better city.
But it is the poison of this extremely prevalent rhetoric about Milwaukee that is perhaps our biggest obstacle to realize true progress. We’re not all in this together. That hasn’t been the case for some time. Perhaps we need the wake-up call of a comment like this from the former president to shake loose the understood and unfortunately accepted dynamic this city grapples with — that dynamic, meaning, that there are people in this state who do not like this city and do not want us to thrive, and that belief is largely encompassed by one of the two main political parties in this state and nation.
Trump, obviously, lacks the subtlety of his Republican contemporaries. But in moments like this, talking about cities like Milwaukee and other large urban areas, their beliefs are ultimately no different. It is insulting. It is demeaning. It is unfair. It is what we have accepted as normal in our politics — and that goes far beyond Trump.
Milwaukee is a phenomenal city. It is truly special. I love it so much, and there’s so much I owe to this place. But I am genuinely concerned about what is going to be said about our city, and what is going to be done to our city when this convention comes to town next month. I am worried that this “horrible city” comment from Donald Trump is merely a precursor of what’s to come, a dark and fraudulent depiction of our wonderful city, broadcast for the world to see.
Because what happens between now and July 18 — the final night of the convention, when Donald Trump is expected to deliver the nomination speech — will reverberate in Milwaukee for years to come, and shape the way people see this city for a long time.
The people of this city are as resilient as it comes, so no matter what happens, Milwaukee will continue to thrive. But as is always the case when it comes to Republicans’ relationship to Milwaukee, this city deserves better.
Dan Shafer is a journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. He’s also written for The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Heartland Signal, Belt Magazine, WisPolitics, and Milwaukee Record. He previously worked at Seattle Magazine, Seattle Business Magazine, the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee Magazine, and BizTimes Milwaukee. He’s won 18 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.
Subscribe to The Recombobulation newsletter here and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at @therecombobulationarea.
Already subscribe? Get a gift subscription for a friend.
Part of a group who might want to subscribe together? Get a group subscription for 30% off!
Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer.
So 'horrible' that we won't pay the city when we leave.
Setting it up.
Hey Dan, you made Jeff Tiedrich! (Don't know him? You should.) https://open.substack.com/pub/jefftiedrich/p/republicans-celebrate-bring-your?r=1x461&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email