Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee | Photo by James Gould

The weekend before Election Day, former President Donald Trump brought his campaign to Milwaukee.

During a Friday night rally at the Fiserv Forum, the same venue where Trump  formally accepted the Republican Party’s presidential nomination just a few months ago, Trump told the crowd that, if he’s elected again, he will bring America back to the “golden age.”

“America will be bigger, better, bolder, richer, safer and stronger than ever before,” Trump said. 

Trump slammed the current state of the economy and also talked about his plan to impose high tariffs on imports. “You’re going to become so rich with the word tariff,” he told the crowd. That was met with a massive cheer. 

The former president declared that his opponent, Vice President  Kamala Harris, “has a low IQ.”

During the rally a section of the crowd in the upper deck began to shout that  they could not hear what was being said on stage. 

A clearly frustrated Trump ripped the microphone away from the mic stand  and yelled, “Do you want to see me knock the hell out of people backstage?”

“I am up here seething. I’m working my ass off with this stupid mic,” Trump added. “I’m blowing out my left arm, now I’m blowing out my right arm and I’m blowing out my damn throat, too, because these stupid people.”

After the mic issues appeared to be fixed, Trump claimed he won Wisconsin twice, although actually, after winning the state in the  2016 presidential election he lost to President Joe Biden in  2020.

John Kettman, a fan of Trump who attended the rally, held a pumpkin with the former president’s face on it while he waited to get into the Fiserv Forum for the rally. He called the prop  a “Trumpkin.”

Kettman said the “middle-class people” are the ones suffering the most in America.

When it comes to foreign policy, Kettman said that Harris “can’t be trusted” and that Trump is the man who can “deal with” North Korea and Russia. 

Another Trump voter who waited to enter the rally was Fernando Puente.

“All the polls say it’s coming out tight,” Puente said of the presidential election.“I’m here on the ground, I see that it’s going to be a landslide, Trump is going to win big.”

Puente added that he wasn’t always a big fan of Trump before 2016. He said he had felt Trump  was “arrogant” and disliked the way he talked, but that all changed for him when Trump started talking about “the border and inflation.”

Wisconsin Republicans who spoke at the rally included ​​former Govs. Scott Walker and Tommy Thompson, U.S. Reps. Scott Fitzgerald and Bryan Steil and candidate for U.S. Senate Eric Hovde, who is challenging incumbent Wisconsin Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin.

“This election is so consequential,” Hovde said from the stage, contrasting “what President Trump and I want to do versus what Kamala Harris and Tammy Baldwin want to do.” Trump and Hovde want to “make America great again” and “restore the American Dream,” Hovde said, while the Democrats  “bankrupted our country, causing the worst inflation in 40 years. … jeopardized our safety by defunding the police and opening our southern borders,” and “divided our country …  by gender, by race, by socio economic class, by religion.”

When Trump took the stage he praised Hovde, calling him “a great guy,” and joked, “He’s a great-looking guy, too, sometimes I say maybe he’d be better off without that mustache. I’m not sure.”

In recent TV ads Hovde’s  campaign has been attacking Baldwin’s girlfriend, highlighting her work as an investment adviser on Wall Street and the couple’s same-sex relationship.

Hovde’s campaign has repeatedly mentioned Maria Brisbane, referring to her as Baldwin’s “life partner,”  although Baldwin publicly refers to Brisbane as her girlfriend.

While Trump spoke,  Harris held a simultaneous rally in Milwaukee just over five miles away at the Wisconsin State Fair Exposition Center. Harris spoke for 24 minutes, according to NBC News, while Trump gave a 90 minute speech. She described Trump as “increasingly unstable,” and said if elected he would walk into the Oval Office with an “enemies list” while Harris would walk in with a “to-do list.”

CLINTON, IOWA - JANUARY 06: Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks to guests during a rally at Clinton Middle School on January 06, 2024 in Clinton, Iowa. Iowa Republicans will be the first to select their party's nomination for the 2024 presidential race when they go to caucus on January 15, 2024. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Former President Donald Trump visited Waunakee Tuesday afternoon, making his first ever stop in the Democratic stronghold of Dane County. 

The stop marks a change in strategy for Republicans in Wisconsin, who have regularly written off the fastest growing county in the state because of its reliably Democratic voting residents. Some Republicans, including former Gov. Tommy Thompson, have pushed for the party’s candidates to make more stops in the area because despite having no chance of winning the county, it is still home to the third most Republicans in the state. 

In 2020, when Trump narrowly lost to President Joe Biden, he won 22.9% of the Dane County vote. 

Trump’s visit was the first time a GOP presidential nominee visited Dane County since Bob Dole did in 1996.

“I think he’s got to come and really tell the people ‘I want your vote, I’m here in Dane County because I’m going to compete for your votes all over the state of Wisconsin,’” Thompson told reporters Tuesday.

The Trump campaign also made a stop at a museum in Milwaukee, the state’s largest city and also a Democratic stronghold, for an event meant to focus on a pro-school choice message. 

Hundreds of Trump supporters attended the rally at Dane Steel on Tuesday where Trump was supposed to deliver remarks on agriculture and the economy. Instead, as he often does at rallies, his speech took a number of detours, including a large section on foreign policy in which he discussed a large-scale missile attack by Iran on Israel Tuesday morning. Trump said that if he was not re-elected, there was a risk of “World War III.” 

“Ever since Iran has been exporting terror all over the world, it has just been unraveling,” Trump said. “The whole Middle East has been unraveling and, of course, the whole world has been unraveling since we left office.”

After the event, Democrats criticized Trump’s remarks for not addressing the needs of Wisconsin voters. 

“Today was yet another speech from Donald Trump where he told stories about himself and aired his personal grievances, went on weird and irrelevant tangents, and spread lies to distract and divide instead talking about real solutions to issues facing Wisconsin families,” Mike Browne, deputy director of liberal advocacy group A Better Wisconsin Together, said in a statement.

Republican Party of Dane County Chair Brandon Maly told the Cap Times that to win statewide, Republicans need to hit at least 23% of the Dane County vote. 

“Everybody needs to turn out, everybody needs to invest,” Maly said. “So yes, more investment is happening here than before. Because, simply put, if we want the math to add up, we have to do better in Dane County as Republicans.”