Donald Trump calls Milwaukee 'a horrible city' weeks before RNC comes to town

WASHINGTON – Donald Trump on Thursday called Milwaukee — where in a little over a month he will be declared the Republican nominee for president — a "horrible city."

Trump made the comment to House Republicans in a morning meeting on Capitol Hill to discuss campaign strategies, among other GOP priorities, ahead of the 2024 election.

"Milwaukee, where we are having our convention, is a horrible city," Trump told the GOP lawmakers, according to a report from Punchbowl News.

His remarks came five days before he is scheduled to visit Racine for a campaign rally and pushed national and state Republicans to offer a flurry of explanations that at times contradicted each other, including providing denials of Trump having said it at all despite the former president himself confirming he made the statement.

"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 a reporter with Fox News about his comment. 'We have to be very careful. But I was referring to also the election, the the ballots, the, the way it went down. It was very bad in Milwaukee. Very, very bad."

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.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Trump characterized the report as "total bullshit."

"He never said it like how it’s been falsely characterized as," Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a post on X. Cheung said the former president was talking about crime and election issues, though members of Wisconsin's delegation didn't agree on which topic Trump was discussing.

Republican members of Wisconsin's congressional delegation offered varying accounts of the comment's context, and one claimed it wasn't uttered at all.

U.S. Reps. Glenn Grothman of the 6th Congressional District, Scott Fitzgerald of the 5th Congressional District and Tom Tiffany of the 7th Congressional District all told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Trump made the comments when speaking about the upcoming election.

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.”

An aide to Fitzgerald also told the Journal Sentinel that Trump’s comments “were about election integrity.”

What did Trump say about Milwaukee?: Here's what Wisconsin's congressional delegation heard

U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, a freshman Republican who represents Wisconsin's 3rd Congressional District in western Wisconsin, blasted Punchbowl's reporting, however, saying in a post on the social media platform X that the former president was "specifically referring to the CRIME RATE in Milwaukee."

In context: Are these two recent statements about crime in Milwaukee fair and accurate?

And Republican U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, who represents the state's 1st Congressional District, said: "I was in the room. President Trump did not say this. There is no better place than Wisconsin in July."

Steil later reversed course and 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."

Tiffany disputed Van Orden's characterization of the comments. He said about Trump: “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.”

There's no evidence to support that Wisconsin's election was tainted by cheating or fraud in 2020. The results have been confirmed by recounts in Dane and Milwaukee counties that Trump paid for, court rulings, a nonpartisan state audit and a study by the conservative legal firm Wisconsin Institute of Law & Liberty, among other analyses.

Trump lost the state to Biden by just about 21,000 votes.

Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, Joe Biden respond to Trump comment

In response to Trump's description of Milwaukee, Mayor Cavalier Johnson said, "Well, if Donald Trump wants to talk about things that he thinks are horrible, all of us lived through his presidency, so right back at you, buddy."

And Biden tweeted a short message: "I happen to love Milwaukee," with a photo of the president at the 2021 celebration of the Milwaukee Bucks' NBA championship.

A Republican National Committee spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment from the Journal Sentinel. But a convention spokeswoman offered CBS58 a fourth explanation, saying Trump was referring to an ongoing debate over where protests should be allowed to occur in the city during the July convention.

Still, a spokesman for the state GOP said Trump's comments were related to elections and added Trump "is correct to highlight the embarrassing mismanagement of elections in Milwaukee."

He cited the conviction of a former Milwaukee elections official who ordered three military absentee ballots under fake names and sent them to a Republican lawmaker who embraces conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

He also cited an incident in March 2023 during which more than 200 voters in one Milwaukee Common Council district race were sent ballots that included the incorrect order for the candidates.

"Election integrity in Wisconsin matters, and the Republican Party of Wisconsin is doing its part to protect the vote," Republican Party of Wisconsin spokesman Matt Fisher said in a statement.

Grothman later said he was confused by the mixed messages from Wisconsin's delegation and reiterated Trump was referring to election issues.

“I guess you can take it however you wanna take it,” he said of Trump’s comments.

But Van Orden Thursday evening attacked the reports of Trump's comments. He said he was standing eight feet away from Trump when the former president made the remarks and maintained Trump "was discussing the crime levels in the city of Milwaukee."

Van Orden said Trump was "on point on everything from foreign to domestic policy" and "discussing things in detail" and lamented that the press was "intentionally focusing on a four-second comment."

"You wanna say Glenn said this, Derrick said that, Tom said this," Van Orden told reporters. "Just knock it off. You're wasting the American public's time."

Meanwhile, Wisconsin Democrats defended Milwaukee and blasted Trump.

“The RNC still chose Milwaukee to come to, right?” Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said.

"It is my hope that not only our former president but everybody who is going to be embarking on Milwaukee sees everything that we have to offer," Crowley said. "We are a great county on a great lake … I can't wait to really prove him wrong and let him know what we have to offer.”

"Once he's settled in with his parole officer, I am certain he will discover that Milwaukee is a wonderful, vibrant and welcoming city full of diverse neighborhoods and a thriving business community," U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, a Democrat who represents Milwaukee in Congress, said in a post on X, referring to Trump's recent conviction in a hush money trial.

Garren Randolph, manager of Biden's reelection effort in Wisconsin, said the city "deserves better than a convicted felon, racist, and wannabe dictator who hates us and our values."

“If Donald Trump thinks Milwaukee is so horrible, then he shouldn’t come to our city," Randolph said.

In a post on X, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers wrote, "add it to the list of things Donald Trump is wrong about." He included the clown emoji.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who is running for reelection this fall, said "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."

"Donald Trump wouldn’t understand even if a jury told him so," she said on X.

Asked about Trump's comments, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde, who is challenging Baldwin, suggested the city needed improvement in its leadership.

“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," he said in a statement. "Milwaukeeans deserve better and that’s why I’m campaigning across the city to show people there’s a different path forward.”

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Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, who was not in the meeting with Trump, told the Journal Sentinel it sounded like Trump's remarks were "distorted and misinterpreted."

"The media is gonna take whatever he says, distort it and try to use it against him," Johnson said in a brief interview.

Thursday's meeting was the first time Trump has visited Capitol Hill since leaving office in 2021.

Trump was scheduled to meet with House Republican lawmakers in the morning at the Capitol Hill Club and Senate Republicans in the afternoon at the National Republican Senatorial Committee office. The twin meetings with congressional Republicans are designed to help shore up unity in the party that has, at times, struggled to agree on major policy priorities, such as providing additional aid to Ukraine.

The visit comes after Trump was convicted by a New York jury on 34 felony charges in a hush money trial and just a month before he is scheduled to be nominated in Milwaukee at the Republican National Convention.

"Milwaukee is an amazing city, attracting millions of visitors every year who fall in love with everything we know makes this city great," Peggy Williams-Smith, president and chief executive officer at Visit Milwaukee, a publicly funded nonprofit group that promotes Milwaukee as a travel destination, said in a statement responding to Trump's comments.

Alison Dirr, Vanessa Swales, Jessie Opoien, Jolan Kruse and Tom Daykin of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contributed to this report.

Molly Beck and Lawrence Andrea can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Trump calls Milwaukee, host for the 2024 RNC, 'a horrible city'