Trump’s Bizarre New Excuse for His Milwaukee Comments

Donald Trump can’t outrun his tactless comment about Milwaukee, so now, he’s decided to pretend it never happened in the first place.

Last week, in a meeting with House Republicans, Trump called Milwaukee a “horrible city,” even though he is expected to head there for the Republican National Convention next month.

Republicans rushed to provide a smattering of explanations for why the former president would self-sabotage in such spectacular fashion, including Trump, who offered his own excuse—and doubled down on his insults, arguing that the city was overrun with crime, even though statistics from the city’s police department don’t support his claims.

Now Trump’s given up on excuses, and has decided to deny, deny, deny. During an interview on Newsmax Saturday, Trump insisted that he’d never said anything about Milwaukee at all.

“They make up a story that I said something bad about Milwaukee, and I just ask you this, who would do that? Who would say something bad about a place that you want to win, you want to win over?” Trump demanded.

Too bad for Trump, not only had several of his lackeys already backed him up and into a corner, but he himself had already acknowledged the original comment.

He’ll get an unpleasant reminder of his words once he arrives in Milwaukee for his likely nomination for president. National Democrats have set up 10 billboards around the city plastered with his face and comment.

Trump held a roundtable meeting at a Black church in Detroit over the weekend that perfectly summarized Trump’s snake oil tendencies—with vastly inflated audience numbers, at least half of whom were white, and Trump ranting his staple complaints about the border, inflation, and crime.

Trump allies praised Trump’s appearance on Saturday at 180 Church as a smashing success, with Kellyanne Conway claiming over 8,000 people magically packed into the rows of seats where only a few hundred could have sat, even as many pews remained empty. Reuters notes the venue wasn’t at capacity by the time the roundtable began.

The pitch by Team Trump to appeal to Black voters in a city where in 2020 Biden won nearly 95 percent of the vote was further foiled by observations that many in the audience were, in fact, not Black. Per Russ McNamara of WDET, roughly half the crowd were white. Of the eight Black people who attended that he spoke with, none were congregates of the church.

The pastor of the church who agreed to host Trump, Lorenzo Sewell, told MSNBC that people laughed in his face when he attempted to pitch them into attending the event.

“I remember walking down Grand River, a place that is desolate on the west side of Detroit, and walking down the street and just inviting people, saying, ‘The former president is here if you want to come,’” Sewell told MSNBC. “They were laughing like I was when I first was approached.”

Sewell spent time before the event began wearing a ‘Make Black America Great Again’ shirt, according to Reuters, with the panel moderated by Trump V.P. hopeful Byron Donalds. NAACP Detroit Chapter leader and Detroit pastor Dr. Wendell Anthony panned the event, telling MSNBC, “He did not articulate any policy. He articulated the fact that he wanted to come and get some Black votes.”

After his church stunt, Trump gave the keynote address to his real base of racists and white nationalists at Turning Point’s “The People’s Convention.”

On Friday, Lara Trump made what she probably thought was an impassioned statement against committing election fraud and cheating at Turning Point Action’s convention in Detroit.

In reality, Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law showed that she doesn’t understand the meaning of irony.

“To anyone who thinks about cheating in an election: If you cheat in an election, we will find you, we will track you down, and we will prosecute you to the full extent of the law,” the Republican National Committee co-chair told Turning Point’s Charlie Kirk, to applause from the audience.

But on X (formerly Twitter), it was quickly pointed out that the former president and convicted felon had attempted to do just that in 2020, and is on trial for it in Georgia and Washington, D.C.

Lara Trump’s election as co-chair of the RNC earlier this year signaled her father-in-law’s full takeover of the of Republican Party, and she quickly pushed through different priorities for the party, such as a new election integrity division led by former Trump lawyer and election denier Christina Bobb. That move quickly backfired, as Bobb was charged in Arizona with trying to interfere in the state’s 2020 election results. Similarly, the RNC also lost an attempt to limit voting rights in the Grand Canyon state.

Lately, Lara Trump and the RNC have been preparing for the possibilities that Donald Trump might lose his upcoming presidential debate with Joe Biden, and that he might be in prison or house arrest by the time the party’s convention takes place this summer in Milwaukee (where he doesn’t even want to go). They’re also trying to put together a party platform for the first time since 2016 with yet another election denier (and also January 6 participant), Ed Martin, taking part. Perhaps Lara Trump needs to step back and make sure the new Republican Party platform includes some introspection.

The only thing Rick Scott is better at than bad timing is hypocrisy. The Republican senator and Earthworm Jim lookalike released a campaign ad touting his support for in vitro fertilization on Friday—less than 24 hours after voting against the Right to IVF Act.

The caption for the poorly-timed campaign ad reads, “Each of my 7 grandkids is a precious gift from God. But sometimes families need help. You can count on this grandpa to always protect IVF.” In the ad, the Florida senator mentions that his youngest daughter is receiving IVF treatments and that “she and I both agree IVF must be protected.”

The ad was first posted to Scott’s X (formerly Twitter) account on Friday morning, and was quickly hit with a fact-check that Scott voted to kill the Right to IVF Act the day before.

Senate Democrats have attempted to pass legislation to codify access to contraception and IVF into federal law this past week, with Senate Republicans voting opposed and killing the bill each time. Senate Republicans, meanwhile, have offered a much weaker bill in support of IVF that would withhold Medicaid funding for the procedure and released a signed letter stating their support for IVF hours before voting down protections. Their softball bill was rejected, with Senator Patty Murphy calling it a “PR tool, plain and simple.”

The effort to codify access to IVF and contraception comes ahead of an increasingly fraught general election season. The Southern Baptist Convention voted to oppose IVF on Tuesday, with Trump ramping up support for their cause. He provided a pre-taped appearance for the SBC’s anti-abortion forum hosted by a group that describes abortion as “child sacrifice.” Trump praised the extremist group, promising they would “make a comeback just like no other group.”

Lindsey Graham still is a Donald Trump sycophant through and through, as evidenced by his birthday message to the former president and convicted felon.

The message posted on X (formerly Twitter) seemed over-the-top, especially since Graham praised Trump’s golf game.

But a quick look behind the scenes reveals that the South Carolina senator thought his initial message didn’t go far enough—and he made a quick edit to the post to make sure to add the word “president” before Trump’s name.

Grahamhas gone from being one of Trump’s early critics to carrying out Marilyn Monroe’s birthday song to John F. Kennedy in the form of a social media post. He has thrown his support behind Trump nearly every step of the way, to the point of getting a little too involved in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results and refusing to accept the 2024 results if Trump doesn’t win. He has bent over backwards to justify Trump’s mishandling of classified documents, criticized the Manhattan district attorney’s office long before Trump was indicted on hush-money charges, and cried foul over the implication of Trump doing anything wrong on January 6, 2021.

It’s a far cry from Graham’s famous quote from 2016: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it.” In fact, before Trump’s ascendancy to the White House, Graham was a relative moderate in the Senate, voting to confirm two of Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominees, supporting legislation to create a legal path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and even working on some proposals to tackle climate change.

But as soon as Trump cemented himself in the Oval Office, Graham put his misgivings aside and became Trump’s phone buddy, where they discussed their mutual love of golf. At one point, Graham even promoted Trump’s golf course on his Twitter account. One could be forgiven for forgetting that Trump tweeted Graham’s personal phone number to the public way back during his campaign in 2015.