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Some of Donald Trump’s supporters took a nap on the sidewalk outside his rally in Racine, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, waiting to be among the first few inside. Hundreds showed up in the early morning hours for the rally 30 miles outside Milwaukee, just days after Trump reportedly called it a “terrible city” during a meeting with Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill last week.
A rallygoer outside Racine Festival Park showed off a thigh tattoo that read “Made in America” beneath a portrait of Trump. Several other supporters wore black and orange prison T-shirts bearing the ex-president’s Georgia mugshot and messages encouraging Trump to “never surrender” despite the four criminal cases against him.
The rally in Wisconsin comes less than a month after a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment to (adult film) star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Trump will next month returning to Wisconsin for the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where he is expected to officially become the party’s 2024 nominee.
Wisconsin is a crucial battleground in November and one of the states crucial to winning the White House in 2024. Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 by just 0.7 percent. But the state turned blue for President Joe Biden in 2020 by a margin of 0.6 percent. “Thousands of Wisconsinites will gather in Racine to show their support for President Donald J. Trump,” Republican National Committee (RNC) spokesman Jacob Fischer said in a statement ahead of Trump’s arrival.
“Within a month, tens of thousands of people will gather in Wisconsin as President Trump formally accepts the Republican nomination,” he added. “His America First agenda will end Joe Biden’s crippling inflation, skyrocketing prices, border crisis and rampant crime, Making America Great Again.” Some outrage followed after Trump called Milwaukee a “terrible city” during a meeting with Republican lawmakers in Washington DC last Thursday.
But Trump’s campaign, as well as many of those who attended the Capitol Hill Club event with the ex-president, claim the comment was taken out of context by the media. “In a desperate attempt to get likes, Fake News Jake Sherman – who wasn’t even in the room – falsely claimed that President Trump called Milwaukee a ‘terrible city.’ It’s a total lie,” Trump’s deputy communications director Dylan Johnson wrote.
He added, “President Trump explicitly referred to the problems in Milwaukee, particularly violent crime and voter fraud.” Trump still faces three more cases with dozens more charges against him in Georgia, Washington DC and Florida.
As temperatures soared above 80 degrees ahead of Trump’s arrival in Wisconsin on Tuesday, a video was played of the former president encouraging his supporters to “make a plan” to vote if they couldn’t make it on Election Day in November to fetch.
After years of condemning mail-in voting fraud, Trump is now urging his supporters to embrace the tool in order to “overwhelm” Democrats in the 2024 elections. “Keep your eyes open, because these people want to cheat,” Trump said in the clip played to the crowd trickling in.