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.”

Bucky Badger | Photo by James Gould

With early voting underway and only six days until Election Day, on the streets around the State Capitol and on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, we asked people who they want to become the next president of the United States and what are the issues that matter to them.

Wisconsin is one of the key swing states that could determine whether former President Donald Trump returns to the White House or Kamala Harris makes history to become the first woman to hold that office.

 At one end of the iconic State Street is the Capitol and at the other lies the UW-Madison campus, home to nearly 50,000 students.

On your way down State Street, you can see shop windows with posters of Kamala Harris while around the Capitol on Monday a “Japan supports Trump” demonstration carried Trump flags.

At the Farmers Market on Saturday there were campaign tables set up with leaflets and flags. The election is hard to escape.

In a series of vox populi interviews, voters who gave only their first names spoke with reporter James Gould.

Jim, a middle-aged man who stopped to talk, said he was voting for “Trump, definitely.”

Asked why, he said former President Donald Trump “has proven he can do the job” and is “hands down” a more capable candidate than Kamala Harris.

The main issues in this election for Jim are the “economy and immigration.”

UW student  Zoe said her top concerns as she casts her vote will be “abortion rights, women’s rights and housing.”

She said women anywhere in the United States should have the “ability to get our help.”

Zoe said it is “truly difficult” for anyone in the “middle class to get affordable housing and live comfortably,” adding that Madison “has recently got so expensive.”

With all that in mind, she is voting for Kamala Harris.

Backing up that claim about the rising cost of living was another UW student, Austin. He added that anyone “working in the middle-class” is having a really hard time. Austin said he believes that “Kamala Harris has a plan to fix it” and doesn’t think Donald Trump has.

Bernie Sanders speaks at a rally in downtown Madison, Wis. on Oct 28, 2024 | Photo by James Gould

With just under a week to go until Election Day, U.S. Rep.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) took to the stage Monday at the Overture theater in  Madison in front of a packed crowd.

During the rally to support Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris, the progressive legislators also took the opportunity to address racist  jokes made by a comedian who described Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage” and talked about Black people carving watermelon at a Donald Trump rally in Madison Square Garden.

The remarks have  sparked outrage across the nation with Puerto Rican celebrities and performers taking to social media to show their disgust.

 Ocasio-Cortez said as a “Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx” she found the remarks “horrific.” Adding that the Trump campaign “knew exactly what they were doing.”

“They want us to think he’s not talking about me. He’s talking about some ‘other’,” she added.“It’s the same kind of logic that says a Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx has no business connecting with the community of Madison, Wisconsin.

“When we hear an individual, whether it’s Donald Trump or one of his cronies on a stage, talking about our fellow Americans as a pile of garbage, know that he’s talking about us, he’s talking about you,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

Madison and surrounding Dane County are Democratic strongholds, so this was a rally to generate even more noise and action for Kamala Harris.

Throughout the night and even during a mic-check, the phrase “every vote counts” in Wisconsin was repeated at various times.

In an attempt to create some kind of distance to from the racist joke controversy, Danielle Alvarez, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, said in a statement that the Puerto Rico joke “does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”

Bernie Sanders, who took the stage as Ocasio-Cortez left the podium to a standing ovation,  focused his speech on uniting people across  the United States.

He began by criticizing Trump directly, calling him a “pathological liar.” 

Sanders also emphasized f protecting working-class people and expanding the  social safety net.

One of the biggest cheers of the night came after Sanders said: “We have got to cancel all medical debt in America.”

He also addressed the situation in Gaza. Sanders highlighted his frustration with the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s military response following the Oct. 7 attacks, which killed 1,200 Israelis and led to 250 hostages being taken captive. He said he supported Israel’s right to defend itself but condemned what he described as an “all-out war” on Palestinians in Gaza, leading to 42,000 Palestinian deaths and severe damage to Gaza’s infrastructure, health care, and educational systems.

In a social media video posted the same day as the Madison rally, he attempted to reassure progressive voters about what a Harris policy approach would look like. 

Sanders told rally goers he would work with Harris to secure the release of the hostages, get more humanitarian aid into Gaza and commit to the rebuilding of the Gaza Strip for the Palestinian people.

“I promise you, after Kamala wins, we will together do everything that we can to change U.S. policy toward Netanyahu,” Sanders said.

He detailed his confidence that Harris would be much better for humanitarian priorities than Donald Trump.

Bringing his speech to an end in Madison he said: “We’ve got to bring our people together.”

Next up for the campaigns in Wisconsin, Vice President  Kamala Harris will hold a rally in Madison on Wednesday night while Donald Trump returns to the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, where he was officially nominated in July at the Republican National Convention, on Friday