Republicans in Wisconsin have long used Milwaukee as a political punching bag, while former President Donald Trump has bashed the heavily Democratic city over crime and its election process — most recently calling it “horrible.”
But starting Monday, Milwaukee will be the site of the party’s biggest bash in years.
Despite those attacks, Republicans are flocking to the largest city in the Midwestern battleground state for the four-day national GOP convention, where the party will formally nominate Trump and seek to rally support less than four months out from the presidential election.
Wisconsin Republicans have downplayed Trump’s most recent comment about Milwaukee in interviews with and statements to NBC News, while state Democrats have repeatedly decried the former president’s slights against their beloved lakefront city.
Trump’s remarks have emerged as a flashpoint in the critical Senate race between Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin and her Republican challenger, businessman Eric Hovde.
“Milwaukee makes the greatest beer, brats, and motorcycles in the world. It’s home to some of our most vibrant communities, hardest workers, and is a part of what makes Wisconsin the best state in the nation,” Baldwin said in a statement to NBC News.
“Donald Trump couldn’t be more wrong about Milwaukee and it just shows how out of touch he is. I urge him to take some time next week to learn a thing or two about the place he’s hosting his convention and see just how great it is,” she added.
Hovde, for his part, said in a statement to NBC News that, “I love the city of Milwaukee and it’s sad to see how poorly Democrats have run it for generations — and that includes Sen. Baldwin and President Biden.”
“Milwaukeeans deserve better and that’s why I’m campaigning across the city to show people there’s a different path forward,” Hovde added.
Even before Trump insulted Milwaukee as a “horrible” city during a meeting last month with House Republicans in Washington, the former president had long criticized it as a hotbed for crime and has falsely claimed its election processes in 2020 were tainted by widespread fraud.
Trump has denied the reports that he said Milwaukee was a “horrible” city, claiming that he was talking specifically about crime and the last election.
“We’re very concerned with crime. I love Milwaukee. I have great friends in Milwaukee. But it’s, as you know, the crime numbers are terrible,” Trump told Fox News. “I was referring to also the election, the ballots, the, the way it went down. It was very bad in Milwaukee. Very, very bad.”
Trump has falsely claimed he won Wisconsin in the 2020 election and has repeatedly criticized absentee voting in Milwaukee, as well as election officials in the city.
Wisconsin Democrats have made clear in recent days they haven’t forgotten about Trump’s criticisms of Milwaukee.
“What he said about Milwaukee being a horrible city is just one of many fabrications that the former president has made up,” Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said in an interview.
“When people get on the ground here, they’ll see that this is a great city,” he said. “It’s also home to thousands of Republican voters who have called Milwaukee home for some time, who raised their kids and their grandkids here, who are vital members of our society. He called their home horrible. I think it was a little bizarre for him to do, and just another in a long string of lies.”
The partisan jockeying underscores the crucial role Wisconsin will likely once again play in the outcome of the 2024 election. Four of the last six presidential elections have been decided by less than 1 percentage point in the state.
Despite the attention the convention will generate, there is little evidence that the site a party chooses to host its event will provide it with much of a long-term political boost.
Greta Neubauer, the minority leader in the state Assembly who represents a Racine district, south of Milwaukee, said that “the people of Milwaukee were not surprised to hear this from Donald Trump,” adding that “Republicans have been vilifying and attacking the city of Milwaukee for years.”
“The voters of Milwaukee and the voters of Wisconsin are not going to forget that Donald Trump has repeatedly disrespected them, disrespected our state, and demonstrated no commitment to work on behalf of the people of Wisconsin, to improve our lives,” she said.
Milwaukee Alderman Robert Bauman, whose district includes much of the city’s downtown, called Trump’s comments “ridiculous.”
“Like any big city in this country, there’s assets, there’s liabilities, there’s challenges, there’s strengths, and we have them. So for him to focus on that, just to call something horrible, it’s an ad hominem attack on the state of urban America in every big city in the country,” he said. “It’s just nonsense.” (As a member of Milwaukee’s Common Council, Bauman was elected as a nonpartisan.)
Bauman, whose district includes the Fiserv Forum, the arena that will host the convention’s proceedings, said the comments amounted to Trump playing into the “tensions that exist between residents of suburban and outstate Wisconsin,” where Republicans perform better electorally, and “Wisconsin’s two big cities,” Milwaukee and Madison.
Some prominent Wisconsin Republicans have nodded to — or fueled — those tensions.
Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Wis., who represents a solidly GOP district north of Milwaukee, is a constant critic of the city. Most recently, he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that “Milwaukee’s problem is they keep voting for left-wing Democrats,” adding that “they have made a mess of Milwaukee.”
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., attempted to explain Trump’s remarks last month by saying that the point “he was trying to make is that he’s concerned about crime in Milwaukee, and we all should be.”
Former Gov. Scott Walker, meanwhile, told the Journal Sentinel that the relationship Republicans in the state have with its biggest city is “complicated” because “they felt the results” from funding allocated to the city “weren’t effective.”
But Republicans rejected claims that Trump was inflaming divisions in the swing state. They argued that Trump has had the final say over nearly every element of the convention, though the GOP selected Milwaukee as the host city long before he emerged as the party’s presumptive nominee.
“We wouldn’t be having the convention here if Donald Trump didn’t want it here,” said Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman Brian Schimming. “We could have this convention in 100 cities, and we’re having it in Milwaukee. He’s cool with it.”
“There are a whole lot of people in Milwaukee who share Donald Trump’s concern about crime in Milwaukee,” he added.
The quadrennial convention will bring tens of thousands of delegates, party and campaign officials and media members to the greater Milwaukee area — and with them millions of dollars in revenue for local restaurants, hotels and businesses — a fact that Schimming said residents and voters wouldn’t soon forget.
“In the end, the logic of it is that Wisconsin is an important place to be,” Schimming said. “And in Wisconsin, if you’re going to have a convention, Milwaukee is a very important place to be.”