There Is No Quiet Part

Trump’s big mouth is landing him in political hot water.

Let’s say you’re the presumptive nominee of the GOP, and in about one month, your party will hold its nominating convention in the great city of Milwaukee.

That location was no accident. Wisconsin is a key swing state. A narrow victory there helped deliver the White House to you in 2016, but a narrow loss there helped elect Joe Biden in 2020. It’s hugely important for your campaign to win back the state in 2024.

Indeed, it was Milwaukee that did you in last time. You fought hard to have all of those votes thrown out because they contained so many African American ones. But you did not succeed, and now your co-conspirators are under indictment in Wisconsin for forging fake elector slate certifications.

So you want to win back the hearts of Milwaukee residents and the state of Wisconsin, right? Not if you’re Donald Trump. In remarks before his GOP colleagues at the Capitol on Thursday—his first return to the scene of the crime since January 6, 2021—Trump said, “Milwaukee, where we are having our convention, is a horrible city.”

Ruh-roh.

Republicans are scrambling to deny or explain his remarks, but they had better get used to playing clean up. Whenever Trump has spoken in public lately, he can’t help but say whatever he is actually thinking at the time. Sometimes that comes out as pure gibberish, and sometimes it comes out like a form of political Tourettes, if you’ll excuse the reference, where he insults the very people who are showing up to hear him or, in the case of Milwaukee, hosting his convention.

Let’s look at some recent examples and then come back to the Milwaukee comment.

Leaving Las Vegas

Nevada is another key swing state in the election. So earlier this week, someone in the Trump Campaign thought it would be a great idea to hold an outdoor rally in the scorching heat of Las Vegas, where temperatures hit above 100 degrees. 

Trump showered love and praise upon those who had braved the high temperatures to see him. Just kidding! He did quite the opposite. Trump first whined about the heat, and how everyone including the Secret Service was more worried about the state of people in the crowd than about his own discomfort.

“They never mentioned me. I’m up here sweating like a dog,” Trump complained. “This is hard work.”

Then came the brutal truth, as Trump urged people not to leave early and joked, “I don’t want anybody going on me. We need every voter. I don’t care about you. I just want your vote.”

I can see it on campaign bumper stickers now:

Trump 2024! 

He doesn’t care about me.

He just wants my vote.

It was a revealing moment of candor, or perhaps the inevitable result of a complete lack of filter. But a joke about not caring about his voters, after exposing them at length to dangerous desert sun, feels callous, not funny. In fact, the campaign already knew it was in for a difficult day. It had hired extra medics and brought in misting tents, extra water and fans, while allowing attendees to carry umbrellas for shade. Still, because of the extreme setting, six people had to be sent to the hospital, and 24 were treated on site, mostly for heat-related symptoms.

This wasn’t even the Trump Campaign’s first experience this year with overheated MAGA crowds. During a rally in Arizona the week before, where temperatures outside had reached 113 degrees, 11 people had to be transported to hospitals for heat exhaustion. Many supporters had waited in line for hours, and some were unable to get inside before the mega-church venue was at capacity. 

Shark week

During the speech, Trump veered off into a nonsensical soliloquy about (checks notes) sharks, batteries and boats. Had Joe Biden said anything remotely like this, he would be done: 

I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight and you’re in the boat and you have this tremendously powerful battery and the battery’s underwater, and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?’ By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately. Do you notice that? A lot of shark… I watched some guys justifying it today: ‘Well, they weren’t really that angry. They bit off the young lady’s leg because of the fact that they were not hungry, but they misunderstood who she was.’ These people are crazy.

As Prof. Brian Klaas pointed out in his excellent piece in The Atlantic, Trump always seems to get a pass because of the “banality of crazy,” meaning Trump is so crazy that when he says more crazy, unhinged things, it barely registers any more. By contrast, a single gaffe by Biden is pounced on by the media as evidence that he is too old and addled to serve.

(It should also be noted that Trump, ever the stable genius, is unfairly maligning sharks and gets the science completely wrong on batteries underwater. Sharks are not attacking humans in greater numbers, and batteries in the water would not electrocute nearby humans, who conduct electricity far more poorly than seawater itself.)

What both the “I don’t care about you, I just want your vote” and the shark/boat/battery word vomit demonstrate is this: Trump off-script is a walking disaster and has less mental acuity than a hamster. But will swing state voters, who may have forgotten how truly soul-sucking it was to listen to him every day as president, wake up to the fact that he’s worse than ever? 

Trouble brewing in Milwaukee

One way to remind a section of these voters is to amplify what Trump actually said about their hometown. Remember, Trump thinks he can peel off large numbers of African American voters this time, citing way-too-early polls showing that such voters may be more persuadable this time around.

The city is split nearly evenly in its racial make-up between whites and African Americans, at around 38 percent each. Hispanics, whom Trump is also trying to court, are around 13 percent. That makes Milwaukee one of the most racially diverse cities in America. But there is also civic pride that unites the residents, including a recent NBA championship win by the Milwaukee Bucks and iconic characters and moments in film and television. 

The Morning Joe show put a nice compilation together today to remind America:

No one likes to hear a politician, let alone a convicted felon from Florida, call their home “horrible.” And Wisconsin’s elected representatives didn’t hold back.

Said Milwaukee mayor Cavalier Johnson in response, “All of us lived through his presidency, so right back at ya, buddy."

Rep. Gwen Moore, who represents the district in Congress, posted, “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.”

And Wisconsin’s Sen. Tammy Baldwin quipped, “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.”

The blowback could explain why some Republicans’ first instinct was to deny Trump ever said it. Chief apologist for Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson, was the worst offender. On Sean Hannity’s show, Speaker Johnson was asked to “settle one thing once and for all” over whether Trump “took a shot” at Milwaukee. “Did he do that?” Hannity asked him.

”I didn't hear it,” Johnson said with a poisonous smile, “and I was sitting right next to him.”

When denial didn’t work, especially after Trump later confessed to saying it, other GOP apologists insisted Trump was referring to crime, or voter fraud, or something else, as if calling the city crime-ridden or full of ballot cheats is somehow better.

With all my usual caveats about polling, it’s worth noting that these comments by Trump come as polling averages actually show him down in the important battleground state of Wisconsin. Decision Desk’s polling average of 22 state level polls currently has Biden leading Trump by 3.1 points in Wisconsin.

This is a state that Biden won by less than half a percentage point in 2020, just around 20,000 votes. This November, every vote there is going to count, so Trump is doing himself no favors by running his mouth off about Milwaukee being a “horrible” city—even before a friendly crowd like the congressional GOP conference. 

But please, just keep talking, Donald. Say what you’re thinking out loud. We already know there is no quiet part.