Last week Donald Trump had some things to say about Milwaukee, the host of the GOP national convention where he will receive the Republican Party’s nomination for president in July. “Milwaukee, where we are having our convention,” Trump said, “is a horrible city.”
Here is David Graham at The Atlantic:
Donald Trump has long cultivated an image as a salt-of-the-earth, everyday American who loves the parts of the nation that elitist liberals dismiss as flyover country. That’s why the Republican National Convention this year is in Milwaukee, the largest city in Wisconsin—a state that Trump narrowly lost in 2020, and which is a must-win for President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign. Now that the RNC has fixed its website to feature a picture of Milwaukee rather than Ho Chi Minh City, the former president has his own words of praise.
“Milwaukee, where we are having our convention, is a horrible city,” he said during a closed-door meeting with Republican members of Congress today, according to Axios and Punchbowl News.
And this:
Trump’s disdain for American cities is one of his most consistent personality traits. His aspersions on Milwaukee were cast from Washington, D.C., another city for which he has little use. “It was also very sad driving through Washington, D.C., and seeing the filth and the decay and all of the broken buildings and walls and the graffiti,” he said last year after a trip to the capital to plead not guilty to federal charges related to his attempt to steal the 2020 election. He also called the city a “filthy and crime ridden embarrassment to our nation,” which is funny from someone accused of committing crimes there. Lately he has been complaining about his own hometown, following his felony conviction in New York City in May.
Some Trump allies have denied the reports that he disparaged Milwaukee. Glenn Grothman and Scott Fitzgerald, both Republican congressmen from Wisconsin, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Trump’s comment reflected his concerns about election integrity in 2020. Their colleague Derrick van Orden, meanwhile, posted on X that Trump was specifically talking about “the CRIME RATE in Milwaukee.” And yet another Wisconsin Republican, Bryan Steil, suggested that there was no comment at all. “I was in the room,” he posted. “President Trump did not say this.”
Read the entire piece here.
On July 8, 2024, a week before the GOP Convention, MobCraft Beer in Milwaukee will release “(Not So) Horrible City IPA.”
This isn’t even the most politicized craft beer in Wisconsin. Minoqua Brewing, in the deeply-red rural northeastern part of the state, became stridently political following the onset of the pandemic, marketing “progressive beer” (e.g., inoffensive and not bitter Biden kolsch, Love Wins fruited sour, and Dark Brandon stout) and fighting conservative local leaders’ attempts to shut down their taproom.
https://www.minocquabrewingcompany.com/blogs/news/surprise-hearing-scheduled-tomorrow-monday-to-shut-down-our-taproom