Trump Tells Voters in Milwaukee He Doesn’t Want Their Money, ‘I Want Your Damn Vote’

Donald Trump speaks at Fiserv Forum on Nov. 1, 2024. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

In a wide-ranging speech Friday night that lasted more than 87 minutes, former president Donald Trump made his case to approximately 12,000 people at Fiserv Forum that he would save the country if elected president.

He also spent plenty of time attacking his opponent, Kamala Harris, who was holding her own rally a few miles to the west at Wisconsin State Fair Park. It was the second time in a week that both candidates were campaigning in Wisconsin on the same day.

For the former president, the rally in Milwaukee marked a return to the venue of the 2024 Republican National Convention. “We love this place, right?” said Trump, taking credit for a Navy ship-building contract awarded to Marinette Marine in 2020.

Wisconsin’s 10 electoral college votes are expected to play a pivotal role in the election, and a recent poll by Marquette University suggests the race is effectively a dead heat in the state. “We win this state and we win the whole thing,” said Trump on Friday.

The former president let on that he was buoyed, at least in part, by what he said was a “pitiful” October jobs report released by the Department of Labor Friday. Doing a substantial amount of math on the stage, he claimed a “whistleblower” had exposed lies in the data, creating downward revisions. “It’s great to run against the people that created those numbers.” However, thousands of people lost their jobs across the southeast following the hurricanes this month and several strikes, resulting in just 112,000 being added in October. The report said the unemployment rate remained at 4.1%.

He also repeated his false claims that he won Wisconsin during the 2020 election. “I actually won it twice but these are minor details,” he said.

Standing in the center of where the Milwaukee Bucks play, Trump referred to the team’s star Giannis Antetokounmpo. “I would say the Greek is a seriously good player.” But then he veered into a comment about Antetokounmpo’s racial makeup.  “And tell me, who has more Greek in him, the Greek or me? I think we have about the same, right?” Antetokounmpo’s parents immigrated to Greece from Nigeria.

He also mentioned that former Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre endorsed him and spoke at his rally in Green Bay in Wednesday. “I love Brett Favre,” he said, while discussing the size of his fingers and how they help him throw a football really far.

The crowd, however, was not all Wisconsinites. At one point, Trump shouted out Illinois and a large portion of the audience issued a cheer. He then went on to attack governor JB Pritzker and his weight.

At the convention, Trump gave the longest convention speech in U.S. history. This time, the former president took time out of a roughly one-and-a-half-hour speech to explain his discursive style of public speaking, which he calls “the weave.” The former president said he doesn’t care about teleprompters, “Because I never read the damn thing anyway.” But at several points he could be seen reading the teleprompters.

Trump wove in and out of campaign talking points and digressions on a number of MAGA themes like migrant crime and expanding fossil fuel production, or “drill, baby, drill” as he likes to say.

At several different points, he stopped to grouse about his microphone after members of the crowd were shouting that they couldn’t hear him. “I’m seething,” he said. “I’m working my ass off with this stupid mic.” He said the contractor shouldn’t be paid and that the media would take that out of context.

He more than once mentioned that he thought Eric Hovde was handsome, “He’s such a handsome guy.” He also told a woman in the crowd she was beautiful, then lamented that you’re not allowed to call anyone beautiful anymore, then, turning to U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson said, “Ron Johnson would never do that, that’s why he’s a great politician.”

Hovde and Johnson were among a handful of Wisconsin Republicans that opened the event for Trump, including party chairman Brian Schimming, former governors Scott Walker and Tommy Thompson and U.S. Representatives Scott Fitzgerald and Bryan Steil. New MAGA figure Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also gave a speech, and told voters in Wisconsin not to vote for him despite the fact his name will be on their ballots.

The message from the Wisconsin Republicans was mostly doom and gloom, with Trump as a source of hope. Walker waxed about how life was better under Trump. Steil told the crowd, “Help is on the way”; Hovde said “I sometimes don’t recognize our country”; Johnson said the Democratic Party is a “threat to America.”

Trump summed up his message to voters early in his speech, “We have a country that’s going to hell but we’re gonna turn it around very fast.” Whether the problem is inflation, the general economy, crime, immigration or international conflict, according to Trump, it is the fault of President Joe Biden and Harris. And under Trump, all these problems will be solved. At least, that’s what he promised his supporters in Milwaukee Friday night.

Like many of his speeches throughout the campaign, Trump dedicated significant time to sewing fear about immigration. He said “bloodthirsty criminals” are coming into the country and that he plans to “launch the largest deportation program in history” and “ban all sanctuary cities,” which refers to municipal governments that do not cooperate with federal law enforcement agencies to detain undocumented immigrants.

Trump made the economy, and promises of enriching Americans through tariffs and fossil fuel production, major pieces of his speech. He didn’t just promise to end inflation, but said inflation would have never happened had he won the presidency in 2024. However,  Trump’s signature economic policies of tax cuts and tariffs would likely worsen inflation according to several economists.

Trump launched personal attacks against his opponent throughout his speech, calling Harris “stupid,” possessed of a “low IQ” and unfit for the job. “She’ll get overwhelmed, melt down and millions of people will die.” He also appeared to disparage Hovde’s opponent, Sen. Tammy Baldwin. He began my mentioning that Hovde looked like he was out of “central casting” then wove into an attack on Baldwin, “Is she a disaster? Oh she’s a horror show.”

Trump also attacked the press, pointing to media in the room and saying, “They’re the most dishonest human beings.” He reserved special ire for ABC News anchor David Muir: “His hair’s not as good as it used to be.”

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