Donald Trump during a stop in Milwaukee praised school choice, said he’ll campaign in Green Bay soon and downplayed injuries soldiers suffered in Iraq while he was in office.
Meanwhile, during a Dane County rally earlier Tuesday, he promised to crack down on illegal immigration and reduce taxes.
He also used his Waunakee rally to insult Dem rival Kamala Harris as grossly incompetent and a “bad human being” while labeling her the “tax queen.”
During the Milwaukee stop, which wasn’t open to the public, former GOP Gov. Tommy Thompson introduced Trump, who said Harris and the “radical left Democrat party” want to “keep Black and Hispanic children trapped in family government.”
“I believe that school choice is the civil rights issue of our time,” Trump said.
“Our opponents are using government schools to indoctrinate children, pushing radical trends and gender ideology on children,” Trump said.
The former president added an often-repeated false claim that schools are changing children’s genders without parental consent or knowledge.
Trump called Thompson “one of the founding fathers of school choice,” pointing to his time as governor of Wisconsin, when in the 1990s he created the nation’s first private school choice program. The program first allowed low-income Milwaukee families to send their children to non-religious private schools, then expanded to include religious schools in 1995.
Trump said families in Milwaukee are faced with “one of the worst public school systems in the entire country,” but “school choice gives Milwaukee children a lifeline to a better education.”
Trump fielded questions from reporters during the Milwaukee stop in addition to his remarks. Trump said he will be announcing two more “big” campaign events in Green Bay and a third that is “a little bit more of this nature.” He last visited Green Bay in April for his first campaign rally in the state of 2024.
Trump will next be in Wisconsin on Sunday for a rally in Juneau.
Trump was asked about the escalating war in the Middle East, including Iran firing missiles into Israel, which some predict will lead to retaliation from Israel. Trump said “you have to give Israel a lot of credit for being able to protect itself.”
“Sometimes you have to just sort of let it go on a bit and see what happens,” Trump said. “But it’s really caused by a lack of respect for the United States of America.”
Trump said Iran wouldn’t have attacked Israel if he was in office, but the president of the United States should “blow that country to smithereens, because [Iran] can’t do that.”
One reporter pressed Trump on whether he should’ve been tougher on Iran after the country launched ballistic missiles on U.S. forces in Iraq in 2020. The Defense Department at the time said the attack left more than 109 soldiers with traumatic brain injuries.
“What does injured mean? Injured you mean because they had a headache?” Trump said. “Because the bombs never hit the fort. So, just so you understand, there was nobody ever tougher in Iraq.”
Ahead of Trump’s stops, Harris’ campaign released a statement from Dem Gov. Tony Evers, who called the former president “a disaster for Wisconsin” while in the White House. Evers said “Trump’s extreme Project 2025” would hurt working families, cut Social Security and Medicare, and gut education.
“I know Wisconsin families, and they’re going to reject him again in November,” Evers said. “Vice President Harris is the only candidate in this race fighting to lower costs, cut taxes, and invest in Wisconsin’s future.”
As he did during a stop in Prairie du Chien on Saturday, Trump during his Waunakee rally distorted data Immigration and Customs Enforcement released to Congress last week on the number of migrants with criminal convictions living outside the agency’s detention. Trump charged more than 425,000 criminals, including more than 13,000 with homicide convictions, are now free to roam the country due to Harris and President Joe Biden.
ICE says that data stretches back four decades, and the vast majority on the list were from before Biden took office.
Trump cited the numbers during his speech at a factory in Waunakee as he expressed outrage at examples of those in the U.S. illegally who have committed violent crimes. That includes the rape and murder of Maryland mother Rachel Morin and Georgia college student Laken Riley. In both cases, authorities have arrested men from El Salvador and Venezuela, respectively, they say were in the country illegally.
Trump said he believes “Kamala murdered them just like she had a gun in her hand.”
“We’re crime fighters,” Trump said. “We’ll restore light and hope, and I’ll make America safe again. On day one of my administration, the invasion ends and the deportation begins.”
Trump jumped from one topic to the next during his nearly 75-minute speech, often going off on tangents. At one point, Trump recounted for the crowd an oft-told story about a 2018 meeting with Air Force Lt. Gen. John D. Caine about eradicating ISIS in Iraq.
Saying Caine was “better looking than any guy you could put in a movie,” Trump then went on a riff about Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 movie “Full Metal Jacket.” He recounted how former Marine R. Lee Emery, who Trump didn’t identify by name, was eventually cast as the drill sergeant after originally being brought in as a technical adviser to train those who were up for the role. After marveling at the casting process, Trump went right back to recounting his conversation with Caine.
Among other things, Trump repeated his vow to eliminate taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security and to reduce the corporate tax rate to 15% from the current 21% that he signed into law while in office.
He also vowed to impose tariffs, including on cars he said China plans to build at plants in Mexico to then come into the U.S. without facing taxes. Economists have said Trump’s plans to impose tariffs would be passed onto American consumers. But he likened his plan to Milwaukee-based Harley-Davidson building a plant in India to produce motorcycles because it was cheaper than paying the tariff to ship them from U.S. factories.
“If they play that game, we have to play the game, too,” Trump said.
Note: This story was updated Oct. 2, 2024, with reporting from Trump’s Milwaukee event.
