Politics and Current
Trump’s “scary city” comment about Milwaukee was cautiously deemed an insult to black voters
Democratic leaders have reacted sharply to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s recent disparagement of Milwaukee, which they see as a direct insult to Black and brown communities across the town.
“For people who say Donald Trump is trying to win the support of black voters, well, he’s telling black voters, he’s telling brown voters exactly how he feels by attacking the most diverse city in a state that he’s desperately trying to win in November,” said Mandela Barnes , senior fellow at People For the American Way.
Trump reportedly criticized Milwaukee as a “scary city” during a closed-door meeting with Republican lawmakers on the Capitol on Thursday. Trump and Republicans tried to explain that the previous president’s remarks were about the town’s crime rate, not the town itself.
Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, who’s black, also sharply criticized Trump after his reported slights against the town where greater than 42% of the population is black and brown.
“If Donald Trump was talking about things that he thought were terrible, then we all lived through his presidency, so I’m turning to you, buddy,” Johnson said during a news conference.
The 37-year-old mayor later told CNN that he also finds it “weird” that Trump is disparaging the town where he’ll soon be the GOP presidential nominee in July in the course of the Republican National Convention. Not to mention that “about 50,000 people vote Republican in the city.” He added: “Politically, you shouldn’t bite the hand that could potentially feed you.”
Walton also criticized Trump and his 2020 campaign for trying to “throw away hundreds of thousands of votes” in majority-Black Milwaukee County based on false claims of voter fraud.
“This is who he has all the time been. He would not rent apartments to black people. He was the one who stood up and said we had to (execute) the Central Park Five,” she recalled.
Walton said this moment is one other opportunity for black voters to reject Trump’s goals of reclaiming the presidency.
“Black people voting in a place like Milwaukee, the same in Detroit, the same in Philadelphia, the same in Atlanta and Charlotte, we can determine who will be the next president of the United States,” he argued. “We already know who he is. We don’t have to go back in that direction.”
Walton, in turn, said President Joe Biden is “actively working on behalf of the Black community” and doing so intentionally. He highlighted the administration’s policies, including reducing the price of diabetes medications, halving black child poverty, appointing a record variety of black federal judges and signing the nation’s first federal anti-lynching law named for Emmett Till.
Organizations just like the Hip Hop Caucus and Power to the Polls are working in cities like Milwaukee to register Black voters and educate them on political issues that directly impact them ahead of the November 5 election.
“We’re stepping up the largest Black mobilization effort in state history and we’re not talking to people we already expect to vote,” Barnes said of the trouble in Wisconsin, a key battleground state. that can help determine the results of the presidential election.