Photo credit: Erin Berge
Crowd lined up outside of UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena before the Donald Trump's rally on Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2020.
Wisconsin is not only considered to be a key battleground state in 2020, but perhaps the state that can swing the election in one direction or the other. With such a hot contest underway, Donald Trump supporters were out in force last night, with some setting up camp in the cold, slushy UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena parking lot overnight to get prime seats the next day.
The stadium looked only half full when Senator Ron Johnson took the stage at the beginning of the rally, but by the time Mike Pence was warming the crowd up, the almost nine thousand stadium seats were filled, along with a crowd on floor level in front of the stage. Meanwhile, a large coalition of local organizations gathered nearby at Red Arrow Park to protest.
Milwaukee is Trump’s second campaign stop of the year, and he’ll be returning to Wisconsin frequently. Rallies like this are Trump’s happy place, where he can get his ego served by stadiums of people cheering as he boasts about his accomplishments, like rolling back Environmental Protection Agency policies and his strike killing Iranian Gen. Soleimani.
The crowd was in a fever at all this, but they knew when to boo and hiss, especially when it came to the “demented hoaxes and crazy witch hunts” of his impeachment. “It’s the greatest hoax perpetrated on our country, ever,” Trump explained. In a speech that lasted a bit over an hour and a half, Trump lied, bragged, insulted and baffled. Here’s 10 of those moments.
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1.) Trump attacked his enemies “Sleepy Joe” Biden, “Crazy Bernie” Sanders (“a nasty guy,” Trump said), “Nervous Nancy” Pelosi and slurred Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas.” He reminded us that he will never be out of 2016 campaign mode when he mentioned Hillary Clinton and Benghazi so he could rile the crowd into chanting “Lock her up! Lock her up!” as he smirked at them and said, “she should be, she should be.”
2.) Another classic mantra that got dusted off was “Build the wall!” Trump: “Our very big and very powerful border wall” is currently 100 miles long and “soon we’ll be building about a mile a day and we should be up to over 400 miles by the end of next year, and shortly thereafter it’ll be finished.” Most ridiculous of all, Trump doubled down on his claim that “Mexico is paying for the wall, you know that. You’ll see that, it’s all worked out.”
He threw in some racial fear mongering about immigration that was meant to hit close to home, singling out Madison and Milwaukee: “Right here in Wisconsin, cities run by far left politicians are releasing dangerous criminal aliens who abuse, assault and threaten innocent children—your children.”
3.) The most frightening sound of the evening were Trump supporters reacting to protestors, who interrupted the rally three times, first a group of four or five, followed by two individuals. The howling hatred started as a murmur then crescendoed like a jet taking off as it filled the whole stadium. As the protestors were led away by security, Trump supporters jumped up and tried to tear her sign away from her, looking so full of wrath that you had the feeling they would tear her limb from limb and throw her internal organs around the Panther Arena if they could get away with it, while the crowd shouted “USA! USA! USA!”
4.) Besides protestors, the members of the free press got the biggest hate from the crowd. Trump singled out the assembled press in the back of the stadium several times, calling them “fake news” and saying “there are a bunch of corrupt people back there” as the Trumpers yelled, flipped the bird, and gave thumbs down to media outlets like C-SPAN and CNN.
5.) The biggest cheer of the night, on the other hand, came after Trump gave a shout out to former Governor Scott Walker. “The state set a record, the most successful it’s ever been and by the way, that’s because we got a lot of help from a guy named Scott Walker. Your governor.”
6.) The most puzzling tangent came as Trump was boasting about making light bulbs and dishwashers great again.
“I brought back the old lightbulb! Better light, for much less money if you want it, right, little thing.” By contrast, Trump says that new energy efficient light bulbs contain “hazardous waste,” cost “five times as much,” and, most damning of all “make you look orange.”
“I’m also approving new dishwashers that give you more water so you can actually wash and rinse your dishes without having to do it ten times, 4-5-6-7-8-9-10,” Trump said, making a dish rack sliding motion back and forth with his hands. “Anyone have a new dishwasher? I’m sorry for that. It’s worthless. They give you so little water.” Trump’s actual experience washing dishes is unknown.
7.) “Virtually every top Democrat also now supports late term abortion, ripping babies straight from the mother’s womb, right up to the moment of birth. And that is why I’ve asked Congress to prohibit extreme late term abortion because Republicans believe that every child is a sacred gift from God,” Trump said as massive cheers filled the arena.
8.) Trump claimed that “African American poverty has reached the lowest rate ever recorded,” and thus, “African Americans are joining the Republican Party like no one ever thought possible, they love us, and we love them.” Anecdotally, it doesn’t seem to be true—of the 10,000 people at this rally, 99.9% are definitely white.
9.) Best inadvertent burn on his own people: “For decades politicians ran for office promising to defend Wisconsin workers, but then they went to Washington and lined their pockets with special interest cash as they shipped your jobs and your dreams to countries thousands of miles away, countries that you never even heard of.” I think Trump is saying they all suck at geography.
10.) Trump talks about his “perfect call” with Ukraine, but decides to speculate on...uh...what the spirit of Lyndon B. Johnson, who might be in heaven or hell would think?
“Lyndon Johnson, all of them—Lyndon Johnson was sort of a tough guy. Can you imagine his phone calls? He’s either looking down or looking up and he’s probably saying, ‘These people have gone crazy, this is the nicest call I’ve ever…’ in fact, someone said ‘I never knew you could be so nice on a telephone call.’”
The rally ended with a chaotic (but not violent) scene outside of the rally as protestors (who had marched over from Red Arrow Park) chanted “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA!” while Trumpers chanted back “Four more years!” and vendors tried to sell Trump hats and scarves, and shirts that read “Bitch, I’m the President,” (another shirt featured poor Baby Yoda in a MAGA hat.)
Ah well, maybe the city made some money off all this. Actually, Trump has about $60,000 in unpaid bills for 2016 campaign rallies in Eau Claire and Green Bay. A new proposal from Democratic lawmakers will attempt to prohibit rallies in Wisconsin from presidential campaigns that haven’t paid up.
The presidential election is 293 days away.
Editor's Note: Tea Krulos, the writer of this article, was interviewed about his coverage of the Trump rally by Madison radio station 89.9 FM (WORT) on Thursday, Jan. 16, 2020. You can listen to the segment of the program by clicking here, looking for the Jan. 16 edition of "8 O'Clock Buzz" and scrolling ahead to approximately 43:45 in the recording.
