Although Republican Party frontrunner Donald Trump and many Wisconsin Republicans have been critical of Milwaukee for years, the party is now preparing to descend on the city for the Republican National Convention, July 15-18. Despite calling the city “horrible” as recently as June and surviving a recent assassination attempt, Trump has confirmed he will speak at the convention. The party aims to make Milwaukee their hub as they officially nominate Trump for the November election.
According to NBC News, Trump has also denied that he said Milwaukee was a horrible city, instead opting to clarify to Fox News that he was referring to its crime statistics. “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.”
Even if you take Trump’s claim at face value, the second claim was conclusively disproven by a firm his campaign hired to investigate alleged voter fraud in the 2020 election. The campaign’s efforts to prove election fraud focused on Milwaukee and Madison, two overwhelmingly Democratic cities. Trump’s first claim could reasonably be seen as another in a long list of racist comments he has made, especially since, according to Data USA, Milwaukee is a majority-minority city.
According to The Guardian, Sen. LaTonya Johnson, a Democrat who represents Milwaukee, said in an interview that Republicans, including Trump, often target the city because of its makeup. “Republicans always make it seem like the bulk of – if they feel that there’s fraud – in the system that is coming from the city of Milwaukee, right? And the question is why? Because Milwaukee is majority minority.
Milwaukee’s first Black Democratically-elected mayor Cavalier Johnson said in an interview, as per NBC News, that he believes Trump’s statements about his city were bizarre.
“What he said about Milwaukee being a horrible city is just one of many fabrications that the former president has made up. When people get on the ground here, they’ll see that this is a great city,” Johnson 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.”
Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman Brian Schmming, meanwhile, couldn’t refrain from taking a dig at Milwaukee and other cities run by Democrats as he told the Associated Press that he hoped the RNC highlighted the positive aspects of the city. “I hope this convention shows off all the best things about Milwaukee. But it is a city, like many other Democrat-run cities, that has extraordinarily significant issues.”
According to the New York Times, coming to Milwaukee along with Trump and the RNC is a group of approximately 120 different protest organizations.
Some protesters have decried Milwaukee’s decision to host the convention due to its solid support for the Democratic Party, but Johnson, a Democrat, has wholeheartedly embraced his role as host for the RNC. Johnson rather pragmatically told WPR News, “The thing to me is that the Republican nominee is going to be nominated somewhere,” Johnson said. “So what better way for us to be able to realize our ambitions for growth than to have a national political convention that’s going to be watched the world over come to Milwaukee.”
RELATED CONTENT: Tim Scott Defends Trump’s ‘Black Jobs’ Remark In Interview
from Black Enterprise https://ift.tt/NxjlvT1
via FWG
No comments:
Post a Comment