Milwaukee’s mayor said Thursday that former President Trump’s remarks disparaging the city as “horrible” could cost him the 2024 election.
“In Wisconsin, we are [a] purple state, and statewide elections are decided on a razor-thin margin,” Mayor Cavalier Johnson (D) told CNN’s Laura Coates. “And so for the former president to call Milwaukee a ‘horrible place,’ that’s insulting the home to roughly 50,000 people who vote Republican if you’re in the city.”
Trump reportedly said Milwaukee is a “horrible” city during a closed-door meeting with GOP House members Thursday, causing widespread backlash from the state’s Democrats.
The Trump campaign quickly pointed out that Trump wasn’t disparaging the city as a whole, but merely criticizing its crime rate.
Wisconsin was decided by just 21,000 votes in the 2020 election, one of the closest margins nationwide.
Badger State Republicans also came to Trump’s defense after the comments were reported, with Reps. Derrick Van Orden and Bryan Steil saying Trump didn’t in fact disparage Wisconsin at all.
Van Orden labeled reports of the comments “lies by omission,” and Steil said the comments simply did not happen.
Johnson, however, said the defense put Republicans in an awkward position.
“I heard all the responses from Republicans,” he said on CNN. “They were twisting themselves into so many different ways.”
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), who is up for reelection this fall, also hit Trump over the comment.
“Stop picking on Wisconsin. Stop picking on Milwaukee,” Baldwin told The Hill. “We make the best brats there, the best cheese there. We make Harley Davidsons there. They’re hardworking people, and it’s a great city in a great state.”
Milwaukee will be the host city of the Republican National Convention next month, when Trump will be officially named the party’s presidential nominee and when he will first announce his vice president pick.