“Tells us everything we need to know”: Democrats react to Trump’s pick of JD Vance for his 2024 running mate

Featuring instant reaction from WisDems chair Ben Wikler. Plus: Tammy Baldwin and Cory Booker react to the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump.

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.

Photos and video by Dan Shafer.

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While the RNC was getting underway in and around Fiserv Forum in downtown Milwaukee, Sen. Tammy Baldwin held a roundtable event with Sen. Cory Booker just north of the security perimeter at the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center to discuss education, the arts, and civic engagement.

This also happened to take place just moments after Donald Trump announced his selection of first term Ohio senator JD Vance to be his 2024 running mate. 

I happened to run into Ben Wikler, chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, before the event got underway. I asked for his reaction to the selection. Here’s what he had to say:

“Donald Trump just picked the guy who said he would not have certified the 2020 election under any circumstances, the guy who support an abortion ban with no exeptions for rape or incest, the guy who joins him in the ultra-MAGA economic agenda. He is confirming everything that Trump’s critics are saying about him, which is that he’s running on a campaign to strip Americans from their reproductive freedom and to destroy our democracy. That is who Donald Trump just picked. And whatever he says from the stage at the RNC this week, his decision about choosing the person who would bend over backwards to break their oath of office and undermine the choice of the American voter tells us everything we need to know.”

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After the event, Baldwin and Booker took a few questions from reporters and reacted to the news about their Senate colleague.