What did Trump say about Milwaukee? Here's what Wisconsin's congressional delegation heard.
Donald Trump reportedly referred to Milwaukee as a “horrible city” Thursday, just a month before he’s set to be declared the Republican nominee here at the Republican National Convention.
His quote — made before House Republicans in a morning meeting on Capitol Hill to discuss campaign strategies and first reported by Punchbowl News — set off a shockwave, with Democrats and Milwaukee residents (and its mayor) taking umbrage at the diss.
Republicans and Trump’s spokesman, meanwhile, have said Trump’s quotes were falsely characterized.
So, what did Trump actually say? Republican members of Wisconsin's congressional delegation had varying accounts of the comment and its context, including one who denied it was uttered at all.
U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman, 6th Congressional District
Grothman said Trump “was concerned about the election in Milwaukee” and said he thought Trump “felt we need to do better in urban centers around the country.” He suggested Trump had concerns that Republicans “didn’t do very well in Milwaukee.”
U.S. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, 5th Congressional District
Fitzgeral told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Trump made the comments when speaking about the upcoming election.
An aide to Fitzgerald told the Journal Sentinel that Trump’s comments “were about election integrity.”
Trump has repeatedly falsely claimed he won Wisconsin in 2020 and has at times blamed Milwaukee's election officials for the election outcome, baselessly claiming absentee voting in the state's largest city was rife with fraud.
U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, 7th Congressional District
Tiffany echoed others who said Trump's comments were focused on the upcoming election.
“I think he kind of lumps all those things together, that there were some real improprieties (with the election) in Wisconsin, and cites Milwaukee as a result of it,” Tiffany said.
U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, 3rd Congressional District
Van Orden blasted Punchbowl's reporting, saying in a post on the social media platform X that the former president was "specifically referring to the CRIME RATE in Milwaukee."
According to the Milwaukee Police Department, the city had double-digit percentage drops in homicides (20%), car theft (23%) and property crime (13%) from 2022 to 2023.
Tiffany disputed Van Orden's characterization of the comments.
U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, 1st Congressional District
"I was in the room,” Steil said. “President Trump did not say this. There is no better place than Wisconsin in July."
Steil later said Trump was "was talking about specific issues in" Milwaukee in the context of "a broad conversation about the challenges we face as a country, in particular the challenges that we've seen in Milwaukee."
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Did Trump call Milwaukee 'horrible'? What Wisconsin Republicans heard