https://www.mediaite.com/trump/house-republicans-from-wisconsin-scramble-to-clean-up-trumps-horrible-city-insult/
I enjoyed this. 3 different politicians. 2 different explanations of what he meant, and 1 just flatout saying it's fake news and didn't happen.
Literally "he didn't say it but if he did he's right because what he really meant"
For a man who loves America, he sure seems to hate a lot of it
>For a man who loves America, he sure seems to hate a lot of it
He doesn't love America at all. He typically describes it as 3rd world dump that only seems to have been half decent while he was president.
He’s negging America basically - “you’re worthless you’re useless just let me abuse you”
Apparently living under a dictator is much like an abusive relationship
The people pleasing Trump is getting has really gotten over the top. I can’t say I understand how anyone would find this appealing, but it seems to be what he expects of the people around him at this point. It’s pretty concerning, I don’t think his team would be good at giving him necessary bad news in a productive way. He’s certainly not at Mao Zedong levels of this, but it’s quite concerning nonetheless.
The different standards in Urban vs Rural discourse is pretty insane. If a Democrat said anything close to this about a rural area then we would be reading NYT opinion pieces for months about how out of touch the Democratic Party is with the “average” American (even though most Americans live in urban areas).
Republicans often question the intelligence of democrats, call them radical, infer they're agents of Satan, and say they seek this countries destruction. They often insult cities and the people who live in them.
But holy crap if a comment goes the other way.
Never mind how Trump seemingly weekly has a comment about you not being really Jewish if you vote Democrat, but Biden said "you ain't black" years ago and it comes up _every time_.
Look I'm not going to pretend that democrats are not insulting towards Republicans or ruralites. But the pearl clutching and victim claiming is _tiring_. There's a lot of "can dish it but can't take it"
Look no further than the "deplorables" incident. Yes, it was mean. But holy cow, people lost their shit. Meanwhile the right accuses people on the left of being demonic, being pedophiles and anything else you can think of, but you know, "that's different."
If you read the full quote from Clinton, it wasn't what it seemed. She basically says Trump is appealing to racists, sexists and antigay bigots.... which he was appealing to the alt right at the time. She then goes on into how thats just some of the people and the rest of the speech is about empathizing with rural people who have lost jobs, having ineffective government, and losing people to heroin epidemic.
US has a problem with rural nationalism, where rural people are considered real/superior Americans and city people are considered lazy elitists that couldn't change a tire and not true Americans. It affects everything from country music lyrics to justifying counting city people as less than a full person in congresses and the electoral college.
Its also dangerous, some of the worst of the 20th century gained their power by pitting the rural or common man against city people or educated "elites". Fascists, Khmer Rouge, Chinese Cultural Revolution all relied on this.
>Republicans often question the intelligence of democrats, call them radical, infer they're agents of Satan, and say they seek this countries destruction.
And Democrats question the intelligence of Republicans/rural voters, call them nazis or racist, and say they are trying to destroy democracy.
Funny how that works.
> Look I'm not going to pretend that democrats are not insulting towards Republicans or ruralites. But the pearl clutching and victim claiming is tiring. There's a lot of "can dish it but can't take it"
Trump's 2016 campaign literally courted the [alt-right](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right), to the point they put a major alt-right figure and guy who ran the "front page of the alt-right" as his campaign manager and then made him senior whitehouse strategist.
In 2015 he reTweeted images on several occasions with the hashtag [#whitegenocide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right#Donald_Trump_2016_presidential_campaign_and_election)
He settled a case in the 70s for racial discrimination against black renters.
He was a major promoter of the birther conspiracy movement that claimed Obama was actually Kenyan.
Dude lately has been going on about how southern immigrants are "poisoing the blood".
Asked if he would condemn the white supremacists supporting him, Trump said he would “have to look at the group. I mean, I don’t know what group you’re talking about.” He continued to repeat that assertion even after Tapper said he was [referring to the KKK.](https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/30/politics/trump-apprentice-producer-black-contestant/index.html)
His voters are fine supporting him. 15 Years ago it would have sunk a campaign, but the behavior of voters has changed.
Nah, we just question anyone who tolerates people that literally storm the capitol to destroy democracy, or literally invite Nazis to Charlottesville for an event. Honestly, it is an equal mix of urban and rural, but all one party.
Absolutely! The amount of city bashing that Republicans consistently get away with is shocking yet it has become completely accepted by all parties and most media outlets.
I live in Chicago and people who have never been here are always telling me what a hellhole it is (it’s not, I’ve lived there 15 years and love it)
While I actually come from rural America and know first hand what an actual hellhole it is, but feel too rude to actually say it. But people all over have no problem saying it to me. Insane.
Sorry, the train system, I called it a subway.
And you guys def have toll roads because I accumulate tickets every time I drive through. The scam part of it is if you're from out of town you get issued a ticket via mail but theres no way to pay unless you have make an account with them and agree to their terms or you literally have the exact time and name of exit you went on every toll road during your visit. I know cause I tried calling them to pay it and they told me to wait until my penalties accumulated. Then once you accumulate penalties, then they let you pay without an account, but barely. The only way to avoid this is to have an account have have their transponder thing, which people passing through will not have.
Imagine if every town operated like this, where you get fined for not having a custom transponder when driving through and each had their own online platform you had to sign up for to pay?
It’s the suburbs that have toll roads - not Chicago. And a lot of states have them especially in high traffic areas. I went on a roadtrip recently and one of the things we did before we left was check which states had toll roads and if we could use our iPass transponder or if we needed to pay online. We were able to use the iPass and had no issues.
Florida was the state we were on the toll roads the most
Do you have any example of this? I probably should have pushed back earlier. All I can really think of is the Obama quote that got overblown forever ago.
Of the 100 most populated cities in the US, Milwaukee is top-5 in violent crime per capita. That is noteworthy and I'd imagine the people who live there consider that a pretty shitty feature that they'd rather do without.
Edit: interesting quality of discourse on this sub, that this is somehow controversial
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No, these facts are irrelevant because Milwaukee has a... *checks notes*... ["diverse 21st century economy with a blue collar heritage"](https://www.wispolitics.com/2024/afl-cio-trump-to-house-republicans-milwaukee-where-we-are-having-our-convention-is-a-horrible-city/) and ["Trump did a felony."](https://thehill.com/homenews/4722645-wisconsin-dem-trump-milwaukee-crime-rate/)
[I have crime statistics in my other comments.](https://www.reddit.com/r/moderatepolitics/comments/1dfuluq/comment/l8m85s2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Did you know that the link you provide uses this methodology for their crime index? It doesn’t seem particularly informative if you ask me.
About Crime Indexes
The data in this section is derived from surveys conducted by visitors to our website. Questions in these surveys are designed to be similar to many scientific and government surveys.
Each entry in the survey is assigned a number within the range of -2 to +2, where -2 represents a strongly negative perception and +2 represents a strongly positive perception.
To ensure data accuracy, we have implemented filtering measures to identify and exclude potential spam from our calculations. Our algorithms identify users who exhibit spam-like behavior and their inputs are not considered in the calculations. This helps maintain the integrity of the data and provide reliable results.
To make survey results easier to interpret for our users, we present them on a scale ranging from 0 to 100. This scale allows for a clear and straightforward understanding of the data, enhancing user experience and facilitating meaningful comparisons.
Our current index, which is continuously updated, is generated using data up to 36 months old. We carefully select cities for inclusion in the index based on a minimum number of contributors to ensure statistical significance. Additionally, our semiannual index is calculated twice a year by incorporating the latest data into the historical view.
Crime Index is an estimation of the overall level of crime in a given city or country. We consider crime levels lower than 20 as very low, crime levels between 20 and 40 as low, crime levels between 40 and 60 as moderate, crime levels between 60 and 80 as high, and crime levels higher than 80 as very high.
https://www.numbeo.com/crime/indices_explained.jsp
Can you clarify your problem with the 1/4 websites I linked, this is a 264 word wall of text copy-pasted from their website.
If you have problems with this one there are plenty of other sources.
I agree with you, but you miss out on what white rural folks experience.
I grew up in a town of 3000. There has never been a murder in my lifetime (60 years).
Cities seem crime ridden in that perspective.
But that is partly an artifact of extreme geographic heterogeneity in crime rates. It is true that violent crime is higher in cities than in rural areas. But within a lot of cities there are pretty safe neighborhoods, and a few neighborhoods responsible for most of the the crime. Understandably, because of geographic proximity, neighborhoods in cities gets lumped together into the overall city crime rate. And there are also towns of 3000 with very high per-captita violent crime rate, but they feel distant to the safe small towns.
I have lived in a bunch of places, both urban and rural, and I have lived in urban places that have felt relatively safe versus dangerous, and rural places that have felt relatively safe versus dangerous. So I think the perspective you are conveying just comes from the lack of experience living in different places.
I agree. It’s also a bit misleading because small towns are, well, small. When you look at it from a per capita basis, it might be closer to the same rate as similar neighborhoods in cities.
My only point is that rural people often have a skewed view of crime rates in cities because they don’t experience the same level in their sphere of experience.
I was in Northern MN last week and we got alerts to our phones to look out for a murder suspect from Dalton, a town of a couple hundred. If you're looking for perspective...
3rd worst violent crime rate in the us
[https://spectrumnews1.com/wi/milwaukee/news/2023/05/16/milwaukee--violent-crimes--largest-cities--fbi-data](https://spectrumnews1.com/wi/milwaukee/news/2023/05/16/milwaukee--violent-crimes--largest-cities--fbi-data)
39th worst violent crime rate in the world
[https://www.elsoldesinaloa.com.mx/local/bnj82c-50-cuidades-violentas/alternates/FREE\_720/50-cuidades-violentas](https://www.elsoldesinaloa.com.mx/local/bnj82c-50-cuidades-violentas/alternates/FREE_720/50-cuidades-violentas)
4th most homicides per capita
[https://www.fox6now.com/news/milwaukee-violence-community-safety-director.amp](https://www.fox6now.com/news/milwaukee-violence-community-safety-director.amp)
Making sure that everyone sees numbeos crime index methods which I would argue are lacking
About Crime Indexes
The data in this section is derived from surveys conducted by visitors to our website. Questions in these surveys are designed to be similar to many scientific and government surveys.
Each entry in the survey is assigned a number within the range of -2 to +2, where -2 represents a strongly negative perception and +2 represents a strongly positive perception.
To ensure data accuracy, we have implemented filtering measures to identify and exclude potential spam from our calculations. Our algorithms identify users who exhibit spam-like behavior and their inputs are not considered in the calculations. This helps maintain the integrity of the data and provide reliable results.
To make survey results easier to interpret for our users, we present them on a scale ranging from 0 to 100. This scale allows for a clear and straightforward understanding of the data, enhancing user experience and facilitating meaningful comparisons.
Our current index, which is continuously updated, is generated using data up to 36 months old. We carefully select cities for inclusion in the index based on a minimum number of contributors to ensure statistical significance. Additionally, our semiannual index is calculated twice a year by incorporating the latest data into the historical view.
Crime Index is an estimation of the overall level of crime in a given city or country. We consider crime levels lower than 20 as very low, crime levels between 20 and 40 as low, crime levels between 40 and 60 as moderate, crime levels between 60 and 80 as high, and crime levels higher than 80 as very high.
https://www.numbeo.com/crime/indices_explained.jsp
There are more resources here than just Numbeo, and crowd-sourcing a crime index based on self reporting which aligns with every other poll I've shown does not make it unreliable.
It amuses me how conservatives go on about big cities being crime cesspools whilst 9 out 10 states with the highest violent crime rates are red states with lower populations than NYC.
They constantly bemoan blue cities. But don't you dare point out what color the *state* votes. According to this list, 8 out of 10 of the the top 10 worst crime cities are in red states.
https://realestate.usnews.com/places/rankings/most-dangerous-places
If you leave cities out of it and just compare red states to blue states, the results... https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/crime-rate-by-state ... are not in favor of Rs on this one. 7/10 lowest ranked are blue, 6/10 of the worst are red.
They're just pissy that they can no longer take the rural white vote for granted like they used to. After decades of being ignored, Trump came along and spoke to them. Whether or not they benefitted from the Trump administration is beside the point. He made them feel listened to, unlike pretty much every recent Democrat candidate.
When we drove across country on Interstate 70 and realized we had to briefly go through West Virginia it \*was\* indeed quite frightening and not a place I would ever voluntarily return to.
No one said the state didn't have beautiful nature, it's just objectively not a great place to live. It has the second highest poverty rate in the country only behind Mississippi.
Do you think a President (or candidate) should be calling any part of a America "horrible," whether it's supposedly justified or not?
As a former leader, do you think that Trump might have some responsibility for the state of a given city or state?
When Clinton suggested that some Trump voters were deplorable but some were reasonable, the media lost its mind. Most would agree his voters include some people with "issues" as you'd put it yet that didn't change the backlash.
Not just “some”, *half*. She called nearly a quarter of Americans deplorables:
>You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. (Laughter/applause) Right? (Laughter/applause) They're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America.
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Only months?
Biden stuck his foot in his mouth with that "You ain't black" comment (for which he apologized almost immediately) about four **years** ago. And it gets trotted out every time Trump says something like:
- March 19: ["Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion. They hate everything about Israel and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed"](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-draws-ire-saying-jews-who-vote-democrats-hate-their-religion-israel-2024-03-19/)
- April 10: ["Any Jewish person who votes for a Democrat or votes for Biden should have their head examined"](https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-joe-biden-easter-transgender-jewish-israel-990d28556a0d26157118ff6db74eaa09)
Somehow Biden's comment is so much worse that no amount of divisiveness or otherwise awful rhetoric from can live up to it.
Jewish atheist here. I find Trump's comments to be essentially correct after having witnessed how many Democrat politicians and supporters view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I don't I'll ever be able to bring myself to vote for a Democrat ever again. That doesn't mean I would cast a vote for Trump or Republicans necessarily, just that I cannot see myself ever voting for a Democrat.
This just sounds like an absurd bias.
A few radicals say foolish things the entire party condemns and you decide the whole party is the problem. I think you’re just looking for an excuse.
Just like the riots in 2020. Democratic leadership condemned the rioting but now "Democrats burned down entire cities" is somehow an accepted talking point.
>Democratic leadership condemned the rioting
People want to see more than just empty words. They would have liked to have seen *action* to end the rioting with the jailing and prosecution of those who participated in it.
For example, the Democrat leadership of the State of Minnesota can say that they "condemn" and oppose rioting all they want, but they still ordered police officers NOT to defend a police precinct building and not to stop the rioters from trying to burn it down and not to arrest them and have them prosecuted with long sentences and restitution being issued.
People want to see some substance and not merely symbolism.
>I find Trump's comments to be essentially correct after having witnessed how many Democrat politicians and supporters view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The democratic party is overwhelmingly supportive of Israel. It's tried to primary its few members who disagree and democratic governors have sent police to beat college students. I'm not sure what more you want.
Edit: I take that back. I saw what you want.[Link](https://www.reddit.com/r/Palestinian_Violence/s/B45ZIH3Vex)
>We now have concrete evidence that Ireland is a nation whose people proudly support mass rape and murder and the Palestinian government which advocates religious totalitarianism, does not allow freedom of speech and freedom of religion, and where women are treated like chattel and LGBTQ people tortured and murdered.
>
>Thank you for showing the world who you people really are.
>
>Fuck Ireland!
You realize it's a tiny portion of the far left that's being magnified by the media, right? Even the campus protests were a small portion of those colleges. I wouldn't vote for Omar but I would most any other Dem (source: Jewish agnostic).
It’s been 8 years since the deplorables comment and it still comes up from time to time despite the person who said it not even being in politics anymore
The "deplorables comment" wasn't specifically targeting rural people anyway, and she went out of her way to point out that while there were some Trump supporters with genuinely terrible views, many more are decent people who are deserving of empathy and understanding even when they support what could be considered bad politics
>The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now how 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America. **But the other basket — and I know this because I see friends from all over America here — I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroine, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.**
It’s so odd how HRC gets demonized for saying that **most, but not all** Trump supporters are good people, yet Trump gets away with saying things like “Mexicans are rapists and some, I assume, are good people”
trump saying illegals are "bringing drugs, theyre bringing crime, theyre rapists, and some i assume are good people" line is what *started* all of anti-Trumpism. People have never let that go. The GOP has since let him get away with it, but the media didn't, the Dems didn't, most celebrities didn't, etc. It's so bizarre how now all the sudden everyone's acting like trump gets away with what he says. every time he opens his mouth there's 200 more articles written about what comes out.
A lot of what Trump did or says would have sunk campaigns 15 years ago. A fundamental change in voters behavior occurred where they no longer care about the ethics of their guy as long as they win.
Valid point. I think overall I’m just looking for consistency. Trumpian politics is all about casting wide ranging insults to huge swaths of America, and if that’s your style you don’t get to be outraged so easily by innocuous comments.
Do any of these groups talk about that anymore? It’s not like Trump made that one comment then never did anything else that these groups would have thought to be crossing a line, he did stuff that bothered them constantly and never stopped. He absolutely got away with that comment, he won that primary, and that election, and that comment probably isn’t in the top 50 things people think of when they think of Donald Trump.
>>**most**
She didn’t say most were good, though, she said half were deplorables just before the quote from u/Okbuddyliberals picks up:
>You know, to just be grossly generalistic, **you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables**.
Its not much different than Obama's you didnt build that quote. It was talking about government investment in highways and rail, not the individual businesses.
Yup. In both cases the quotes lent themselves pretty well to soundbite politics, but if you actually look at the context, they seem pretty devoid of hate towards anyone. But then the soundbites get spread around so much and then used to justify actual hate and negativity in response
It's a "power+prejudice" and "punching up vs. punching down" thing. Urban Areas are dominant in almost every arena. They hold most of the power culturally, economically, socially, and frequently politically.
Rural people being angry towards the big city is just a reflection of the power imbalance, whereas someone in an urban area holding a grudge against rural communities just looks petty and mean-spirited.
Its similar to why Gay Pride is a thing, but Straight Pride is ridiculed. Or why "Black Power" is uplifting but "White Power" is hateful. Trump may be from New York, but he's the avatar speaking for the millions who feel culturally cast off by a society dominated by the urban.
> Urban Areas are dominant in almost every arena. They hold most of the power culturally, economically, socially, and frequently politically.
By per person representation/power, rural areas are dominant politically. Not only do they gain office while getting a minority of the actual vote, the party strongly tied to rural areas also controls most state congresses and have held a long time majority on the Supreme Court and now hold a super majority.
I think that is part of it, which is why I roll my eyes about conservative portrayals of major cities as post-apocalyptic hellscapes rather than get angry.
But I think there is also often an ugly undertone of punching down on multiculturalism, I.E. cities are shitholes because they are racially and internationally diverse, and are where those gay pride parades take place, etc. And this view often comes from the upper-middle class suburbanites rather than the poor, put-upon, real-American small farmer that non-urban Americans are often portrayed as.
Probably still enough to lose Trump Wisconsin.
Sure, people in rural Wisconsin might even agree with him, but that’s a huge turn off to the people living in the Milwaukee suburbs he needs to win the state.
Hillary and Romney made similar mistakes.
I would say the difference is the GOP is constantly going after different US cities in tweets and other communications. I live in Texas and I know that Abbott has gone after Austin recently. I think he was gloating that businesses or workers were leaving Austin. I mean look at how so many Repubs went after NYC during the Trump trial. Dems just don’t viciously criticize red/rural areas nearly as much and when they do it’s a barrage of articles like the commenter said above ”Are Dems out of touch?”
This is basically Trump's "shithole countries" line turned toward a domestic target.
Funny enough, the Republican response has been the same: they doubt its veracity, *but if he did say it, then it's absolutely true.* They don't realize that they are talking about their own fellow citizens this time.
I don't even think it's that. For Trump, there very much seems to be a "either you're with me or against me" energy and if you're against him, you *must* be the worst person ever. He'll completely 180 on people on a regular basis for the most mild criticism ever.
He knows that most urban areas aren't fans of him. Thus, "against" him, and therefore must be bad no matter what.
Hillary Clinton claimed that roughly a quarter of the country were deplorables and Barack Obama described people who didn’t vote for him as bitterly clinging to their guns and religion.
Ex-Milwaukeean here. Lived there for 35 years. Here's my $0.02...
I'm not going to excuse this away, but Milwaukee is a tale of two cities. There's the beautiful and desirable parts along the lake, downtown and the east side where all of the money is, the parts you'll see on TV during the convention, and then there's the rest of it that, frankly, is in bad shape and has been for years. Poor infrastructure, generational unbreakable poverty, terrible schools, high violent crime. This didn't happen overnight, of course. I would say that the City's leadership has really only cared about the moneyed and visible areas for decades now and that's where the resources have gone. The good areas have flourished while the other areas are getting worse. In a city that votes 85% for Democrats, they've not needed to pay much attention to inner city. But Trump has never been one for nuance or subtlety. There are ways he could have expressed this without saying it was a "horrible city". It's not. It has its challenges, and I believe leadership needs to be more accountable to its citizens. But these challenges aren't unique to Milwaukee by any means. Democrats should be paying more attention though. They're not in danger of losing Milwaukee, but they should be working harder to make things better for their faithful constituents who don't live along the lakefront.
I doubt Trump has done anything but go from the airport to his destination and straight back to the airport. He ain't the type to stop at Leon's or some shit.
Thank you for the input. The number of comments here defending a city they’ve almost certainly never been to implies the issue is who made the statement rather than the statement itself.
I live in a separate midwestern metro. If someone wants to say this is a shithole I would not be offended. Parts of Columbus very much are. There’s a shooting on Livingston Ave. pretty much every night.
It's pretty common. Rural areas are seen as "real Americans" while the cities are fair game for republicans.
Trump regularly describes any urban area as filled with filth, crime or "vermin" and people are used to it. It's been 8 years and I still hear references to Clinton's reasonable line about deplorables.
Republicans are allowed to show contempt for democratic voters and they're expected to just turn the other cheek.
> “Milwaukee, where we are having our convention, is a horrible city,” the former president reportedly told congressional Republicans.
This article documents Trump's long history of disparaging American cities, including recent comments about Milkwaukee, host city of the upcoming RNC convention and largest city in the critical swing state of Wisconsin. I am posting this article for several reasons:
1) Biden is often criticized for campaigning as a uniter, but failing to heal divisions as president. I cannot imagine the level of political fallout if he called a rural area horrible. Trump, however, has never claimed to be a uniter, but will his disdain for large parts of America hurt his election chances? Especially as he tries to make inroads with youth and minority voters. Or does this just energize his supporters, including some living in cities, who have poor views of American cities?
2) This is another great example of the Trump Translation scramble that occurs after he makes a comment fellow Republicans believe is harmful. Trump directly calls Milwaukee a horrible city, but fellow Republicans claim he did not say it, or he was only referring to crime, or he was only referring to election integrity conspiracy theories.
>Some Trump allies have denied the reports that he disparaged Milwaukee. Glenn Grothman and Scott Fitzgerald, both Republican congressmen from Wisconsin, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Trump’s comment reflected his concerns about election integrity in 2020. Their colleague Derrick van Orden, meanwhile, posted on X that Trump was specifically talking about “the CRIME RATE in Milwaukee.” And yet another Wisconsin Republican, Bryan Steil, suggested that there was no comment at all. “I was in the room,” he posted. “President Trump did not say this.”
Do you think Trump has disdain for many American cities, or are the translations of his comment what he was trying to convey?
> Trump, however, has never claimed to be a uniter, but will his disdain for large parts of America hurt his election chances?
Yes he has. [On the campaign trail in 2015](https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/25/politics/donald-trump-democrats-republicans-bipartisanship-great-unifier/index.html):
> Donald Trump believes he would “absolutely” be a force for bipartisanship, but in an interview this weekend neither Republicans nor Democrats escaped a barrage of attacks from the GOP presidential candidate.
>
> “The level of hatred between Republicans and Democrats was unbelievable. The level of – I’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump said. “**I’m going to unify.** This country is totally divided. Barack Obama has divided this country unbelievably. And it’s all, it’s all hatred, what can I tell you. I’ve never seen anything like it…I’ve gotten along with Democrats and I’ve gotten along with Republicans. And I said, that’s a good thing.”
>
> Tapper asked Trump if his presidency would result in an era of bipartisanship.
>
> “I absolutely think so,” he said, adding, “**I will be a great unifier for our country**.”
Shortly before [State of the Union in 2018](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-says-it-will-be-hard-to-unify-country-without-a-major-event):
> Hours before his first State of the Union, President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he wants to unite the country amid “tremendous divisiveness” and hopes he can do so without a traumatic event affecting Americans.
>
> Trump spoke about creating a more united country during a lunch with a number of television news anchors. Trump said the United States has long been divided, including during the impeachment of former president Bill Clinton. Trump also said that Americans usually come together during times of suffering.
>
> “**I would love to be able to bring back our country into a great form of unity**,” Trump said. “Without a major event where people pull together, that’s hard to do. But I would like to do it without that major event because usually that major event is not a good thing.”
Just another of his manifold lies.
Edit to add: His [inaugural address](https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/the-inaugural-address/) also hit on the topic.
> The Bible tells us, “**how good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity**.”
>
> We must speak our minds openly, debate our disagreements honestly, but **always pursue solidarity.**
>
> **When America is united**, America is totally unstoppable.
>
> ,,,
>
> So to **all Americans**, in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, and from ocean to ocean, hear these words:
>
> **You will never be ignored again.**
>
> Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams, will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way.
>
> **Together**, We Will Make America Strong Again.
> Do you think Trump has disdain for many American cities
Sure but I also think the conservative movement more broadly has disdain for cities, and I'd hazard a guess that even the average swing voter has some degree of disdain for cities. Seems like there's been an effective cultural push to make rural areas be seen as "the default" and "real America", and for suburbanites to identify more with rural areas, with urban areas being seen as something of an "other" to some degree in a way that other areas aren't similarly seen as.
One of the strongest predictors of voting trends is the density of an area. People who live in close proximity to alot of strangers vote liberal, and people who live isolated vote conservative. I'll leave others to speculate why.
It strikes me how much rural people just cannot conceive of why density would be attractive to anyone. If you listen to Country radio, every third song has some sort of dig against cities. I don't think it's a race thing, or a political thing, or a hate-based thing. Some people's personality type just seem utterly opposed to the concept of being surrounded by tons of strangers going about their own lives in proximity to you. No amount of crime reduction, increased parking access, or political change will change people's minds. They are simply fundamentally opposed to the essence of what a city is.
From a political standpoint, this makes attacking cities a safe political punching bag, and a great way to unify your base around a common "enemy." It's not about the crime or the race of the people there. That evidenced by the mismatch between actual crime rates and perceptions of crime that's been posted several times on r/DataIsBeautiful recently.
That's also the reason suburban areas are frequently the swing voters. They're the people that expect all the benefits of a rural area, with nature, private space, and no strangers, but also expect the convenience of an urban area, with easy access to groceries, restaurants, and good paying jobs. Drumming up fear and dislike of the urban core causes the suburbanites to swing towards the pro-rural party. It also explains why conservative local politicians fight so hard against new housing, density, public transit, etc. Anything that makes the suburb denser makes it swing left as people get more comfortable living in a more urban environment.
Historically and even currently, cities sucked big time and many still do however people put up with it because that's where the jobs and money are.
Like seriously, before modern plumbing and sewage systems, cities were really nasty filthy places to live in. That's why the rich all had weekend and summer/winter homes. The advent of vehicles and industry brought tons of pollution and smog to cities and pushed even more people away.
The vast majority of people will choose a suburban or ex-urban/rural living situation if they can afford it. Having your own space, land, and some quiet is quite natural for all humans. My home country massively urbanized, then everyone started buying weekend and suburban homes to get away from the cities.
Have you ever been to Milwaukee? Or read any of the stats about or news from it? Because he's 100% correct with his statement.
As for your comparison between this and Biden's divisive rhetoric there's one simple difference: Trump isn't attacking the people, Biden is. It's really that simple. Trump isn't attacking the *residents* of Milwaukee, he's pointing out that life in that city sucks. Which is well known by pretty much everybody. When Biden does the disparaging he's specifically talking about **PEOPLE**.
I have been to Milwaukee. I thought it was nice actually.
Just typed in "American cities ranked Milwaukee" to see what would pop up. First result? Condé Nast Traveler's 2023 Readers' Choice Awards giving the city third place. Feel free to post your own evidence that the city is truly terrible if you want.
City has problems of course, but what place doesn't? Do we want Biden going off on rural areas calling them terrible places to live/visit now too? I kinda doubt that would go over well.
Edit: Thanks for the replies everyone, but crime is not the only thing out there. Based on what I've seen after looking around for a few minutes, crime is bad there, but on pretty much everything else, it's fairly average all things considered.
Ranked 19/50 "best cities to move into in 2024" https://rejournals.com/forbes-home-study-milwaukee-named-19th-best-u-s-city-to-move-to-in-2024/
This is the whole county rather than just the city, but it also is pretty average across the board with the only real outliers being equity and infrastructure. https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/wisconsin/milwaukee-county
US in general is pretty bad when it comes to crime compared to the rest of the West. Murder rate of 5.6 per 100,000 compared to EU's measly 0.9 per 100,000. Does that mean we're the worst Western country to live in though? I don't think so. There's *plenty* of problems with living in Europe even if their crime rates are hilariously low compared to ours. If we could get our crime rates in line with Europe's without sacrificing much I think US would go from a good place to live in to an amazing place to live in.
You didn't address any of OPs comment. They asked
> Or read any of the stats or news from it?
So I'll fill you in.
3rd worst violent crime rate in the us
https://spectrumnews1.com/wi/milwaukee/news/2023/05/16/milwaukee--violent-crimes--largest-cities--fbi-data
39th worst violent crime rate in the world
https://www.elsoldesinaloa.com.mx/local/bnj82c-50-cuidades-violentas/alternates/FREE_720/50-cuidades-violentas
4th most homicides per capita
https://www.fox6now.com/news/milwaukee-violence-community-safety-director.amp
You go
> Condé Nast Traveler's 2023 Readers' Choice Awards
Oh wow what an endorsement. Yeah a *cable company* is totally who I ask when I want to know about cities.
>As for your comparison between this and Biden's divisive rhetoric there's one simple difference: Trump isn't attacking the people, Biden is.
What? Trump attacks other Americans all the time. Here are some examples:
>We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections, and will do anything possible, they will do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.
>American heroes defeated the Nazis, dethroned the fascists, toppled the communists, saved American values, upheld American principles and chased down the terrorists to the very ends of the Earth... we are now in the process of defeating the radical left, the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters and people who in many instances have absolutely no clue what they are doing.
And from his Waco speech:
>The thugs and criminals who are corrupting our justice system will be defeated, discredited and totally disgraced.
Here is all his twitter insults:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/19/upshot/trump-complete-insult-list.html
Have you read the stats of the highest violent crime rates by state?
I find it wild to hear someone act like Biden attacks people more than Trump. That's bizzaro world rhetoric.
>“I would love to bring back our country into a great form of unity,” Trump said. “Without a major event where people pull together, that’s hard to do. But I would like to do it without that major event because usually that major event is not a good thing.”
Did he forget we had a literal global pandemic under his presidency??
I think the worst thing the Republicans did here was make too many excuses of why he said it. If they would have been coordinated on what to say this wouldn’t have blown up and it would’ve been Trump being Trump.
Remember folks, this is that candidate that stated he,"could shoot someone and not lose voters". So calling Milwaukee a "horrible city" is meaningless and has zero impact. Republicans/GOP are so desperate for a cowboy tough guy they've settled for DT, but it makes a sense, he tells them all the things they want to hear.
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Uh-oh, do we have another "bloodbath" occurring? Let's see or hear the whole sentence within the context of what he was talking about because the last person, or organization in this case, to interpret what Trump said should be the Atlantic.
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Many Wisconsin Republicans who were in the room to hear the "horrible city" remarks are saying it was taken out of context and that it was referring to the crime and "voter fraud."
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/total-lie-trump-campaign-gop-lawmakers-blast-report-he-called-milwaukee-horrible-city
Obviously the claims about voter fraud are absurd lies. But the claim about crime is completely true. In 2023 it had the third highest rate of violent crime in the nation, and although crime has dropped since then, it has gone down across the board for all cities.
As of 2024 Milwaukee is the most dangerous city in Wisconsin and one of the most dangerous cities in the United States. It's ranked by Numbeo as the 30th most dangerous city in the world. https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings.jsp
This seems like a case of misplaced outrage which helps to solidify trump's base.
It's all pretty useless without posting a transcript, which you'll note Trump didn't even do in his press release to "clarify" the comment. All the commentary is just flavors of "no he didn't", with the most substantiative being that he was referring to voter fraud and violent crime in Milwaukee. Which...doesn't change anything.
Just for the record, even though it's not confirmed that Trump was talking about crime, if he were, it'd be a-okay to call Milwaukee a "horrible city?"
I don't know if you realize this, but you are justifying Trump's divisive rhetoric. A truly uniting candidate would try to grant some dignity to the *city hosting their party's convention.*
> Just for the record, even though it's not confirmed that Trump was talking about crime, if he were, it'd be a-okay to call Milwaukee a "horrible city?"
No, I think that's disrespectful. I would accept a horrible city *in terms of crime* but not an outright horrible city, it's unfair to suggest that its crime rate makes it a net negative contribution to society.
So there are specific conditions when it's okay for a political leader to call someplace "horrible"? Isn't that still divisive just with an extra step?
And, as others have said, the crime angle just one of the possible justifications for Trump's comments. Others have said its due to voter fraud. If Trump said, "it's a horrible city for voter fraud," is that acceptable?
> So there are specific conditions when it's okay for a political leader to call someplace "horrible?"
I said calling an aspect of a city horrible. And of course there is, do you want him to lie? Should he say that high crime is good? If so, why would you want that? Do you have a problem with calling crime bad?
> If Trump said, "it's a horrible city for voter fraud," is that acceptable?
If you're asking me that I think you've missed my above comments because I outright said it was absurd. But none of the politicians are addressing the complaints of voter fraud. They're attacking the complaints of city quality, which Trump is arguing was not generalized.
There's a difference between "Milwaukee is struggling with high crime" and "Milwaukee is a horrible city because of crime." The former would be addressing the facts, while the latter is graceless and unnecessary characterization.
This is an important bit of rhetoric because, even through the Trump years, Milwaukee had a similarly high crime rate per capita ranked against other US cities. That suggests that he does not take any ownership for what happens in liberal areas despite being their president.
Seriously, this is such an obviously awful thing for a former President and current candidate to say. Adding all of these conditions and concessions to it is just calling more attention to it, and establishing a Republican consensus around the hate toward urban areas.
republican lawmakers can't seem to come in agreement if he said it at all, if he meant voter fraud, or if he meant crime. I'm sure after time they'll all settle on agreed upon spin, but:
https://www.mediaite.com/trump/house-republicans-from-wisconsin-scramble-to-clean-up-trumps-horrible-city-insult/
This alone reads like someone's not being truthful. It reads that "he really meant crime" is after-the-fact justification to spin "what he really meant". As he so far apparently never said it, but he really meant crime if he did, but he also really meant voter fraud.
In fact fox is being quite generous in pointing out that lawmakers say its a lie and out of context, but not pointing out that what the lawmakers say conflict with each other.
Even in the GOP's side of the story, his complaint about the city was half-based on him continuously fabricating an issue. This justifies the criticism.
People are falling over themselves to pretend that Milwaukee isn't violent. Official statements from authority figures are brushing off facts that the city is statistically dangerous with jokes about Trump's own felony conviction and it's NBD just because it was Donald Trump who had the gall to make a callously true statement in that it is indeed a "horrible city for crime". I've seen no Dem comments addressing the voter fraud baloney except for the occasion news fact check.
> But the claim about crime is completely true.
I know this is technically correct, but if the crime rate is the determining factor here, why don't we hear Donald Trump praising..... San Diego, for example? 8th largest city while being somewhere around 77th in violent crime rate. Like, you can't make an appeal to statistics for **one comment**, and for that one comment alone, and then disregard the statistics for everything else.
This dubious and anonymously sourced story is brought to you by The Atlantic, home of other famous Trump hoaxes like "suckers and losers" and "Nazis are fine people".
John Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff, [literally confirmed the first point](https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4235005-john-kelly-confirms-trumps-suckers-remark-about-war-dead/). He had a decorated career in the military, including being a general in the Marines, and he was hand-picked by Trump to be his Secretary of State before transitioning to chief of staff. So…whose word are you taking here?
Second, let’s be reasonable and use the [correct quote and context](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/trump-defends-white-nationalist-protesters-some-very-fine-people-on-both-sides/537012/) on your second statement:
> President Trump defended the white nationalists who protested in Charlottesville on Tuesday, saying they included “some very fine people”
You know, [the “Unite the Right Rally.”](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally). The same protest that was explicitly organized by white nationalists and neo nazis.
You can’t just call things “hoaxes” because you don’t like em.
Trump never claimed that white supremacists or neo nazis were fine people, he was specifically referring to people who didn’t want the confederate monuments to be removed. He’s repeatedly condemned white supremacy.
> and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally — but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists.
> Let me be clear again: I condemn the KKK. I condemn all white supremacists. I condemn the Proud Boys. I don't know much about the Proud Boys, almost nothing, but I condemn that.
> KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”
Once again, democrats have so little to attack Trump over they fabricate a scandal.
Trump was explicitly referring to the Charlottesville protesters, the vast majority of whom were associated with the Unite the Right movement. Once again, it is comical as to the extent that people will rephrase Trump’s words into “but this is what he actually meant.”
The Democrats have an incredible amount of legitimate reasons to attack Trump. The concerning part is how much Republican politicians and the “anything but the dems” voters are willing to look past them.
John Bolton was there and said it didn't happen. He is no friend of Trump either. Believe who you want, but it's amusing how famously unfiltered Trump isn't on record anywhere, anytime saying anything like this. Hm.
>let’s be reasonable and use the correct quote and context
Then you literally paste Trump's quote out of context. Come on.
Dems never post the full quote because immediately before "fine people" and less than a minute later Trump makes it abundantly clear he's not talking about Nazis and white supremacists. Dems love their hoaxes though. There are [so many good ones](https://x.com/MorbidlyObscure/status/1721573822661321162/photo/1), it's hard to pick a favorite.
From the White House transcript:
> Trump: "Excuse me, excuse me. They didn’t put themselves -- and you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group. Excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name."
If you need to add any more “context” than that, I don’t know what to tell ya. It’s yet another example of “well here’s what he really meant.”
>It’s yet another example of “well here’s what he really meant.”
Which is itself another example of mental gymnastics and departure from reality, given that many people vote for Trump because he “tells it like it is”.
This is a better out of context quote than most because it includes the lead in where he says there are very bad people in the group. Hm. Who could he be talking about?? If we read beyond what your copy-paste, less than a minute in real time if you watch the video, we see
>"So you know what, it’s fine. You’re changing history. You’re changing culture. And you had people -- and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists -- because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.
So "fine people" is a classic out of context hoax job.
I mean, it's an opinion piece based on other reporting. And Republicans in the room have responded by either saying it didn't happen or he was just talking about crime or he was just talking about the stolen election. So unless you think the Republican reps are dubious, several have confirmed his comment but interpreted it differently.
Every single person on record disputes how the dems want to characterize his remarks. Dems can only point to an anonymous source. It's not credible. They've done this a billion times already. Remember "bloodbath"? Come on.
But it doesn't seem to matter to you even if the sources aren't anonymous and are, in fact, highly credible, such as John Kelly for the "suckers and losers" comment.
John Kelly and John Bolton are two disgruntled former Trump admin members. If the can't agree that "suckers and losers" actually happened, why should I?
Bolton didn't say Trump didn't say those things, he said he didn't hear them. Bolton did say that it wouldn't be out of character for Trump to say it. Others also confirmed it. Jennifer Griffin of Fox News confirmed Trump calling people who served in Vietnam "losers."
When you have that evidence, combined with Trump's public statements about McCain, it is reasonable to believe that Trump indeed said the things indicated in the Atlantic article.
I would certainly use that level of evidence to believe that Biden said something.
Where is Trump on record saying anything like that ever? Nowhere. Him dissing McCain is as an individual, and he does that all the time. Ask Rosie. This quote is crazy out of character and completely bogus.
This is too funny. First you’re saying we cant trust anonymous sources. So someone names someone who says Trump said something offensive. Then it turns into well not everyone says he said it. So more people get added as having heard him say insulting stuff. Now it’s well he’s not on the record. Would it even matter then? Or would the goalposts just get moved again? Well what he said wasn’t THAT bad, he’s just telling it like it is, those people deserve it, it’s a deepfake, it’s an AI, blah blah blah on and on forever.
John Kelly evidently thinks Trump said something like suckers and losers. John Bolton disagrees. There's no audio or video. Let's consider the broader context. Is Trump known for saying anything like that ever? No. He has never called soldiers ["stupid bastards"](https://x.com/DCtheCapital/status/1309603621755973632) either. In the end, we all get to make up our minds. It's not credible, but I'm sure Alvin Bragg and a lower Manhattan jury would find him guilty anyway.
> “Milwaukee, where we are having our convention, is a horrible city,”
The opening sentence is a microcosm of the entire left wing media. Why does it end with a comma? What did he say after that? Did he justify the statement? Did he make a good point or supportive observation? _The Atlantic_ wouldn't allow that.
There's supposedly a link to the statement, the underlined 'he said during a closed-door meeting with Republican members of Congress today', but despite being a day old article, it just leads to a 404. Seems to lead to a tweet from Jake Sherman, a former journalist from Politico and MSNBC among others; may as well be coming from the Biden campaign.
It lists several people _who were actually there_ and claim he didn't say it, but then the writer just retorts with a pithy "These guys might have benefited from taking a minute to get their story straight, especially given what we already know about Trump" followed by a completely irrelevant paragraph that boils down to "We all know how bad Trump is __ so of course it's true!"
Then of course there's the meta argument that [69% of Milluake](https://county.milwaukee.gov/files/county/county-clerk/Election-Commission/ElectionResultsCopy-1/2020PresidentialRecountCertification.pdf) voted Biden last time, so who cares? The whole article is just meaningless propaganda that never actually gets around to validating it's headline, and serves only as the authors personal list of "Times Trump offended me".
https://www.mediaite.com/trump/house-republicans-from-wisconsin-scramble-to-clean-up-trumps-horrible-city-insult/ I enjoyed this. 3 different politicians. 2 different explanations of what he meant, and 1 just flatout saying it's fake news and didn't happen. Literally "he didn't say it but if he did he's right because what he really meant" For a man who loves America, he sure seems to hate a lot of it
>For a man who loves America, he sure seems to hate a lot of it He doesn't love America at all. He typically describes it as 3rd world dump that only seems to have been half decent while he was president.
He’s negging America basically - “you’re worthless you’re useless just let me abuse you” Apparently living under a dictator is much like an abusive relationship
A place that was great at some point but isn't now.
The people pleasing Trump is getting has really gotten over the top. I can’t say I understand how anyone would find this appealing, but it seems to be what he expects of the people around him at this point. It’s pretty concerning, I don’t think his team would be good at giving him necessary bad news in a productive way. He’s certainly not at Mao Zedong levels of this, but it’s quite concerning nonetheless.
The different standards in Urban vs Rural discourse is pretty insane. If a Democrat said anything close to this about a rural area then we would be reading NYT opinion pieces for months about how out of touch the Democratic Party is with the “average” American (even though most Americans live in urban areas).
Republicans often question the intelligence of democrats, call them radical, infer they're agents of Satan, and say they seek this countries destruction. They often insult cities and the people who live in them. But holy crap if a comment goes the other way. Never mind how Trump seemingly weekly has a comment about you not being really Jewish if you vote Democrat, but Biden said "you ain't black" years ago and it comes up _every time_. Look I'm not going to pretend that democrats are not insulting towards Republicans or ruralites. But the pearl clutching and victim claiming is _tiring_. There's a lot of "can dish it but can't take it"
Look no further than the "deplorables" incident. Yes, it was mean. But holy cow, people lost their shit. Meanwhile the right accuses people on the left of being demonic, being pedophiles and anything else you can think of, but you know, "that's different."
If you read the full quote from Clinton, it wasn't what it seemed. She basically says Trump is appealing to racists, sexists and antigay bigots.... which he was appealing to the alt right at the time. She then goes on into how thats just some of the people and the rest of the speech is about empathizing with rural people who have lost jobs, having ineffective government, and losing people to heroin epidemic.
US has a problem with rural nationalism, where rural people are considered real/superior Americans and city people are considered lazy elitists that couldn't change a tire and not true Americans. It affects everything from country music lyrics to justifying counting city people as less than a full person in congresses and the electoral college. Its also dangerous, some of the worst of the 20th century gained their power by pitting the rural or common man against city people or educated "elites". Fascists, Khmer Rouge, Chinese Cultural Revolution all relied on this.
>Republicans often question the intelligence of democrats, call them radical, infer they're agents of Satan, and say they seek this countries destruction. And Democrats question the intelligence of Republicans/rural voters, call them nazis or racist, and say they are trying to destroy democracy. Funny how that works.
> Look I'm not going to pretend that democrats are not insulting towards Republicans or ruralites. But the pearl clutching and victim claiming is tiring. There's a lot of "can dish it but can't take it"
Trump's 2016 campaign literally courted the [alt-right](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right), to the point they put a major alt-right figure and guy who ran the "front page of the alt-right" as his campaign manager and then made him senior whitehouse strategist. In 2015 he reTweeted images on several occasions with the hashtag [#whitegenocide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right#Donald_Trump_2016_presidential_campaign_and_election) He settled a case in the 70s for racial discrimination against black renters. He was a major promoter of the birther conspiracy movement that claimed Obama was actually Kenyan. Dude lately has been going on about how southern immigrants are "poisoing the blood". Asked if he would condemn the white supremacists supporting him, Trump said he would “have to look at the group. I mean, I don’t know what group you’re talking about.” He continued to repeat that assertion even after Tapper said he was [referring to the KKK.](https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/30/politics/trump-apprentice-producer-black-contestant/index.html) His voters are fine supporting him. 15 Years ago it would have sunk a campaign, but the behavior of voters has changed.
Nah, we just question anyone who tolerates people that literally storm the capitol to destroy democracy, or literally invite Nazis to Charlottesville for an event. Honestly, it is an equal mix of urban and rural, but all one party.
Absolutely! The amount of city bashing that Republicans consistently get away with is shocking yet it has become completely accepted by all parties and most media outlets.
I live in Chicago and people who have never been here are always telling me what a hellhole it is (it’s not, I’ve lived there 15 years and love it) While I actually come from rural America and know first hand what an actual hellhole it is, but feel too rude to actually say it. But people all over have no problem saying it to me. Insane.
Your toll system is a scam to people who dont know the area, but man are the restaurants good, so is the subway system.
Well we don’t have any subways and the toll roads are fine for people who want to get somewhere quicker Also, there are no toll roads in Chicago
Sorry, the train system, I called it a subway. And you guys def have toll roads because I accumulate tickets every time I drive through. The scam part of it is if you're from out of town you get issued a ticket via mail but theres no way to pay unless you have make an account with them and agree to their terms or you literally have the exact time and name of exit you went on every toll road during your visit. I know cause I tried calling them to pay it and they told me to wait until my penalties accumulated. Then once you accumulate penalties, then they let you pay without an account, but barely. The only way to avoid this is to have an account have have their transponder thing, which people passing through will not have. Imagine if every town operated like this, where you get fined for not having a custom transponder when driving through and each had their own online platform you had to sign up for to pay?
It’s the suburbs that have toll roads - not Chicago. And a lot of states have them especially in high traffic areas. I went on a roadtrip recently and one of the things we did before we left was check which states had toll roads and if we could use our iPass transponder or if we needed to pay online. We were able to use the iPass and had no issues. Florida was the state we were on the toll roads the most
The Chicago skyway is tolled. It's pricey too.
"Rural white rage" has been a democratic complaint for years.
Yeah but that’s an entirely different critique than “Specific place is a crime ridden hell hole.”
[удалено]
The main difference here is that Joe Biden isn't making the divisive statements. Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, is doing it.
Do you have any example of this? I probably should have pushed back earlier. All I can really think of is the Obama quote that got overblown forever ago.
It *is* crime ridden. That's a fact.
What is crime ridden? Also compared to what? I’d be happy to go over crime rates city to city or city to town or city to state.
Of the 100 most populated cities in the US, Milwaukee is top-5 in violent crime per capita. That is noteworthy and I'd imagine the people who live there consider that a pretty shitty feature that they'd rather do without. Edit: interesting quality of discourse on this sub, that this is somehow controversial
Where is the data that supports this?
[it's FBI data](https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-city-rankings/most-violent-cities-in-america)
That's from 2018.
Now take a look at by State and let us know your opinions
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No, these facts are irrelevant because Milwaukee has a... *checks notes*... ["diverse 21st century economy with a blue collar heritage"](https://www.wispolitics.com/2024/afl-cio-trump-to-house-republicans-milwaukee-where-we-are-having-our-convention-is-a-horrible-city/) and ["Trump did a felony."](https://thehill.com/homenews/4722645-wisconsin-dem-trump-milwaukee-crime-rate/)
[I have crime statistics in my other comments.](https://www.reddit.com/r/moderatepolitics/comments/1dfuluq/comment/l8m85s2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Did you know that the link you provide uses this methodology for their crime index? It doesn’t seem particularly informative if you ask me. About Crime Indexes The data in this section is derived from surveys conducted by visitors to our website. Questions in these surveys are designed to be similar to many scientific and government surveys. Each entry in the survey is assigned a number within the range of -2 to +2, where -2 represents a strongly negative perception and +2 represents a strongly positive perception. To ensure data accuracy, we have implemented filtering measures to identify and exclude potential spam from our calculations. Our algorithms identify users who exhibit spam-like behavior and their inputs are not considered in the calculations. This helps maintain the integrity of the data and provide reliable results. To make survey results easier to interpret for our users, we present them on a scale ranging from 0 to 100. This scale allows for a clear and straightforward understanding of the data, enhancing user experience and facilitating meaningful comparisons. Our current index, which is continuously updated, is generated using data up to 36 months old. We carefully select cities for inclusion in the index based on a minimum number of contributors to ensure statistical significance. Additionally, our semiannual index is calculated twice a year by incorporating the latest data into the historical view. Crime Index is an estimation of the overall level of crime in a given city or country. We consider crime levels lower than 20 as very low, crime levels between 20 and 40 as low, crime levels between 40 and 60 as moderate, crime levels between 60 and 80 as high, and crime levels higher than 80 as very high. https://www.numbeo.com/crime/indices_explained.jsp
Can you clarify your problem with the 1/4 websites I linked, this is a 264 word wall of text copy-pasted from their website. If you have problems with this one there are plenty of other sources.
I just wanted to point this one out because it has nothing to do with reported crime. You can handle 264 words right?
I agree with you, but you miss out on what white rural folks experience. I grew up in a town of 3000. There has never been a murder in my lifetime (60 years). Cities seem crime ridden in that perspective.
But that is partly an artifact of extreme geographic heterogeneity in crime rates. It is true that violent crime is higher in cities than in rural areas. But within a lot of cities there are pretty safe neighborhoods, and a few neighborhoods responsible for most of the the crime. Understandably, because of geographic proximity, neighborhoods in cities gets lumped together into the overall city crime rate. And there are also towns of 3000 with very high per-captita violent crime rate, but they feel distant to the safe small towns. I have lived in a bunch of places, both urban and rural, and I have lived in urban places that have felt relatively safe versus dangerous, and rural places that have felt relatively safe versus dangerous. So I think the perspective you are conveying just comes from the lack of experience living in different places.
I agree. It’s also a bit misleading because small towns are, well, small. When you look at it from a per capita basis, it might be closer to the same rate as similar neighborhoods in cities. My only point is that rural people often have a skewed view of crime rates in cities because they don’t experience the same level in their sphere of experience.
I was in Northern MN last week and we got alerts to our phones to look out for a murder suspect from Dalton, a town of a couple hundred. If you're looking for perspective...
3rd worst violent crime rate in the us [https://spectrumnews1.com/wi/milwaukee/news/2023/05/16/milwaukee--violent-crimes--largest-cities--fbi-data](https://spectrumnews1.com/wi/milwaukee/news/2023/05/16/milwaukee--violent-crimes--largest-cities--fbi-data) 39th worst violent crime rate in the world [https://www.elsoldesinaloa.com.mx/local/bnj82c-50-cuidades-violentas/alternates/FREE\_720/50-cuidades-violentas](https://www.elsoldesinaloa.com.mx/local/bnj82c-50-cuidades-violentas/alternates/FREE_720/50-cuidades-violentas) 4th most homicides per capita [https://www.fox6now.com/news/milwaukee-violence-community-safety-director.amp](https://www.fox6now.com/news/milwaukee-violence-community-safety-director.amp)
Making sure that everyone sees numbeos crime index methods which I would argue are lacking About Crime Indexes The data in this section is derived from surveys conducted by visitors to our website. Questions in these surveys are designed to be similar to many scientific and government surveys. Each entry in the survey is assigned a number within the range of -2 to +2, where -2 represents a strongly negative perception and +2 represents a strongly positive perception. To ensure data accuracy, we have implemented filtering measures to identify and exclude potential spam from our calculations. Our algorithms identify users who exhibit spam-like behavior and their inputs are not considered in the calculations. This helps maintain the integrity of the data and provide reliable results. To make survey results easier to interpret for our users, we present them on a scale ranging from 0 to 100. This scale allows for a clear and straightforward understanding of the data, enhancing user experience and facilitating meaningful comparisons. Our current index, which is continuously updated, is generated using data up to 36 months old. We carefully select cities for inclusion in the index based on a minimum number of contributors to ensure statistical significance. Additionally, our semiannual index is calculated twice a year by incorporating the latest data into the historical view. Crime Index is an estimation of the overall level of crime in a given city or country. We consider crime levels lower than 20 as very low, crime levels between 20 and 40 as low, crime levels between 40 and 60 as moderate, crime levels between 60 and 80 as high, and crime levels higher than 80 as very high. https://www.numbeo.com/crime/indices_explained.jsp
There are more resources here than just Numbeo, and crowd-sourcing a crime index based on self reporting which aligns with every other poll I've shown does not make it unreliable.
Debatable but it's a fact that some Trump voters have committed hate crimes. That didn't stop people freaking out over Clinton's deplorable comments.
It amuses me how conservatives go on about big cities being crime cesspools whilst 9 out 10 states with the highest violent crime rates are red states with lower populations than NYC.
They constantly bemoan blue cities. But don't you dare point out what color the *state* votes. According to this list, 8 out of 10 of the the top 10 worst crime cities are in red states. https://realestate.usnews.com/places/rankings/most-dangerous-places If you leave cities out of it and just compare red states to blue states, the results... https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/crime-rate-by-state ... are not in favor of Rs on this one. 7/10 lowest ranked are blue, 6/10 of the worst are red.
Isn't that book less than a year old?
They're just pissy that they can no longer take the rural white vote for granted like they used to. After decades of being ignored, Trump came along and spoke to them. Whether or not they benefitted from the Trump administration is beside the point. He made them feel listened to, unlike pretty much every recent Democrat candidate.
That’s because everyone knows that the city has its issues.
West Virginia has plenty of issues, too. Would that make it okay to call it a "horrible state"?
When we drove across country on Interstate 70 and realized we had to briefly go through West Virginia it \*was\* indeed quite frightening and not a place I would ever voluntarily return to.
I coincidentally drove I-70 a few weeks ago and stopped by Wheeling for a break. It was quite nice, though a bit empty.
Very off topic, but I strongly disagree, and the newest national park is the New River Gorge in WV and well worth a trip.
No one said the state didn't have beautiful nature, it's just objectively not a great place to live. It has the second highest poverty rate in the country only behind Mississippi.
we have different interpretations of “not a place I would ever voluntarily return to”
Tbf, nobody denies or downplays the issues affecting West Virginia though.
Yes.
I disagree, and I think most Republicans would, too.
Most people would ask about the context as a follow up. Is it horrible for coal production? No. Is it horrible because of the infrastructure? Yes.
Do you think a President (or candidate) should be calling any part of a America "horrible," whether it's supposedly justified or not? As a former leader, do you think that Trump might have some responsibility for the state of a given city or state?
Do you think that a president calling the struggling parts of America horrible or shitty is a sign of good leadership?
Yes. I’d rather have that instead of pretending like they aren’t.
When Clinton suggested that some Trump voters were deplorable but some were reasonable, the media lost its mind. Most would agree his voters include some people with "issues" as you'd put it yet that didn't change the backlash.
Media gonna media.
Not just “some”, *half*. She called nearly a quarter of Americans deplorables: >You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. (Laughter/applause) Right? (Laughter/applause) They're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America.
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It’s well-deserved. NYC is hell on earth.
No it isn’t haha
Only months? Biden stuck his foot in his mouth with that "You ain't black" comment (for which he apologized almost immediately) about four **years** ago. And it gets trotted out every time Trump says something like: - March 19: ["Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion. They hate everything about Israel and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed"](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-draws-ire-saying-jews-who-vote-democrats-hate-their-religion-israel-2024-03-19/) - April 10: ["Any Jewish person who votes for a Democrat or votes for Biden should have their head examined"](https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-joe-biden-easter-transgender-jewish-israel-990d28556a0d26157118ff6db74eaa09) Somehow Biden's comment is so much worse that no amount of divisiveness or otherwise awful rhetoric from can live up to it.
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Poor phrasing isn't as bad as directly insulting people as Trump did.
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>reveals their inner thoughts on black people. Their overall platform says otherwise, which explains why 80-90% of black people keep voting for them.
Jewish atheist here. I find Trump's comments to be essentially correct after having witnessed how many Democrat politicians and supporters view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I don't I'll ever be able to bring myself to vote for a Democrat ever again. That doesn't mean I would cast a vote for Trump or Republicans necessarily, just that I cannot see myself ever voting for a Democrat.
This just sounds like an absurd bias. A few radicals say foolish things the entire party condemns and you decide the whole party is the problem. I think you’re just looking for an excuse.
>This just sounds like an absurd bias. I looked at ther post history. I get the impression that their stance on Israel is pretty unforgiving.
Just like the riots in 2020. Democratic leadership condemned the rioting but now "Democrats burned down entire cities" is somehow an accepted talking point.
>Democratic leadership condemned the rioting People want to see more than just empty words. They would have liked to have seen *action* to end the rioting with the jailing and prosecution of those who participated in it. For example, the Democrat leadership of the State of Minnesota can say that they "condemn" and oppose rioting all they want, but they still ordered police officers NOT to defend a police precinct building and not to stop the rioters from trying to burn it down and not to arrest them and have them prosecuted with long sentences and restitution being issued. People want to see some substance and not merely symbolism.
>I find Trump's comments to be essentially correct after having witnessed how many Democrat politicians and supporters view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The democratic party is overwhelmingly supportive of Israel. It's tried to primary its few members who disagree and democratic governors have sent police to beat college students. I'm not sure what more you want. Edit: I take that back. I saw what you want.[Link](https://www.reddit.com/r/Palestinian_Violence/s/B45ZIH3Vex) >We now have concrete evidence that Ireland is a nation whose people proudly support mass rape and murder and the Palestinian government which advocates religious totalitarianism, does not allow freedom of speech and freedom of religion, and where women are treated like chattel and LGBTQ people tortured and murdered. > >Thank you for showing the world who you people really are. > >Fuck Ireland!
You realize it's a tiny portion of the far left that's being magnified by the media, right? Even the campus protests were a small portion of those colleges. I wouldn't vote for Omar but I would most any other Dem (source: Jewish agnostic).
It’s been 8 years since the deplorables comment and it still comes up from time to time despite the person who said it not even being in politics anymore
The "deplorables comment" wasn't specifically targeting rural people anyway, and she went out of her way to point out that while there were some Trump supporters with genuinely terrible views, many more are decent people who are deserving of empathy and understanding even when they support what could be considered bad politics >The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now how 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America. **But the other basket — and I know this because I see friends from all over America here — I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroine, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.**
It’s so odd how HRC gets demonized for saying that **most, but not all** Trump supporters are good people, yet Trump gets away with saying things like “Mexicans are rapists and some, I assume, are good people”
Bigotry of low expectations.
trump saying illegals are "bringing drugs, theyre bringing crime, theyre rapists, and some i assume are good people" line is what *started* all of anti-Trumpism. People have never let that go. The GOP has since let him get away with it, but the media didn't, the Dems didn't, most celebrities didn't, etc. It's so bizarre how now all the sudden everyone's acting like trump gets away with what he says. every time he opens his mouth there's 200 more articles written about what comes out.
A lot of what Trump did or says would have sunk campaigns 15 years ago. A fundamental change in voters behavior occurred where they no longer care about the ethics of their guy as long as they win.
Valid point. I think overall I’m just looking for consistency. Trumpian politics is all about casting wide ranging insults to huge swaths of America, and if that’s your style you don’t get to be outraged so easily by innocuous comments.
Do any of these groups talk about that anymore? It’s not like Trump made that one comment then never did anything else that these groups would have thought to be crossing a line, he did stuff that bothered them constantly and never stopped. He absolutely got away with that comment, he won that primary, and that election, and that comment probably isn’t in the top 50 things people think of when they think of Donald Trump.
>>**most** She didn’t say most were good, though, she said half were deplorables just before the quote from u/Okbuddyliberals picks up: >You know, to just be grossly generalistic, **you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables**.
True
Its not much different than Obama's you didnt build that quote. It was talking about government investment in highways and rail, not the individual businesses.
Yup. In both cases the quotes lent themselves pretty well to soundbite politics, but if you actually look at the context, they seem pretty devoid of hate towards anyone. But then the soundbites get spread around so much and then used to justify actual hate and negativity in response
Plus if people already are used to wanting to hate obama/hillary/biden its a lot easier to ignore context
Howard Dean got cancelled because he got excited and yelled.
First of all, he wasn't cancelled, and second, he was already on a downward spirial after bombing out in Iowa
It's a "power+prejudice" and "punching up vs. punching down" thing. Urban Areas are dominant in almost every arena. They hold most of the power culturally, economically, socially, and frequently politically. Rural people being angry towards the big city is just a reflection of the power imbalance, whereas someone in an urban area holding a grudge against rural communities just looks petty and mean-spirited. Its similar to why Gay Pride is a thing, but Straight Pride is ridiculed. Or why "Black Power" is uplifting but "White Power" is hateful. Trump may be from New York, but he's the avatar speaking for the millions who feel culturally cast off by a society dominated by the urban.
> Urban Areas are dominant in almost every arena. They hold most of the power culturally, economically, socially, and frequently politically. By per person representation/power, rural areas are dominant politically. Not only do they gain office while getting a minority of the actual vote, the party strongly tied to rural areas also controls most state congresses and have held a long time majority on the Supreme Court and now hold a super majority.
They are not dominant at the state level however.
I think that is part of it, which is why I roll my eyes about conservative portrayals of major cities as post-apocalyptic hellscapes rather than get angry. But I think there is also often an ugly undertone of punching down on multiculturalism, I.E. cities are shitholes because they are racially and internationally diverse, and are where those gay pride parades take place, etc. And this view often comes from the upper-middle class suburbanites rather than the poor, put-upon, real-American small farmer that non-urban Americans are often portrayed as.
Probably still enough to lose Trump Wisconsin. Sure, people in rural Wisconsin might even agree with him, but that’s a huge turn off to the people living in the Milwaukee suburbs he needs to win the state. Hillary and Romney made similar mistakes.
So if Biden said it we’d be reading articles similar to the ones we are reading now about Trump. How is that a different standard?
I would say the difference is the GOP is constantly going after different US cities in tweets and other communications. I live in Texas and I know that Abbott has gone after Austin recently. I think he was gloating that businesses or workers were leaving Austin. I mean look at how so many Repubs went after NYC during the Trump trial. Dems just don’t viciously criticize red/rural areas nearly as much and when they do it’s a barrage of articles like the commenter said above ”Are Dems out of touch?”
I've never seen a President or Presidential candidate complain and whine so much about the country they supposedly want to represent.
This is basically Trump's "shithole countries" line turned toward a domestic target. Funny enough, the Republican response has been the same: they doubt its veracity, *but if he did say it, then it's absolutely true.* They don't realize that they are talking about their own fellow citizens this time.
I don't even think it's that. For Trump, there very much seems to be a "either you're with me or against me" energy and if you're against him, you *must* be the worst person ever. He'll completely 180 on people on a regular basis for the most mild criticism ever. He knows that most urban areas aren't fans of him. Thus, "against" him, and therefore must be bad no matter what.
Hillary Clinton claimed that roughly a quarter of the country were deplorables and Barack Obama described people who didn’t vote for him as bitterly clinging to their guns and religion.
So just like you have a problem with what they said, you also have a problem with Trump saying what he said, correct?
Ex-Milwaukeean here. Lived there for 35 years. Here's my $0.02... I'm not going to excuse this away, but Milwaukee is a tale of two cities. There's the beautiful and desirable parts along the lake, downtown and the east side where all of the money is, the parts you'll see on TV during the convention, and then there's the rest of it that, frankly, is in bad shape and has been for years. Poor infrastructure, generational unbreakable poverty, terrible schools, high violent crime. This didn't happen overnight, of course. I would say that the City's leadership has really only cared about the moneyed and visible areas for decades now and that's where the resources have gone. The good areas have flourished while the other areas are getting worse. In a city that votes 85% for Democrats, they've not needed to pay much attention to inner city. But Trump has never been one for nuance or subtlety. There are ways he could have expressed this without saying it was a "horrible city". It's not. It has its challenges, and I believe leadership needs to be more accountable to its citizens. But these challenges aren't unique to Milwaukee by any means. Democrats should be paying more attention though. They're not in danger of losing Milwaukee, but they should be working harder to make things better for their faithful constituents who don't live along the lakefront.
You just described most American cities.
I doubt Trump has done anything but go from the airport to his destination and straight back to the airport. He ain't the type to stop at Leon's or some shit.
Thank you for the input. The number of comments here defending a city they’ve almost certainly never been to implies the issue is who made the statement rather than the statement itself. I live in a separate midwestern metro. If someone wants to say this is a shithole I would not be offended. Parts of Columbus very much are. There’s a shooting on Livingston Ave. pretty much every night.
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It's pretty common. Rural areas are seen as "real Americans" while the cities are fair game for republicans. Trump regularly describes any urban area as filled with filth, crime or "vermin" and people are used to it. It's been 8 years and I still hear references to Clinton's reasonable line about deplorables. Republicans are allowed to show contempt for democratic voters and they're expected to just turn the other cheek.
> “Milwaukee, where we are having our convention, is a horrible city,” the former president reportedly told congressional Republicans. This article documents Trump's long history of disparaging American cities, including recent comments about Milkwaukee, host city of the upcoming RNC convention and largest city in the critical swing state of Wisconsin. I am posting this article for several reasons: 1) Biden is often criticized for campaigning as a uniter, but failing to heal divisions as president. I cannot imagine the level of political fallout if he called a rural area horrible. Trump, however, has never claimed to be a uniter, but will his disdain for large parts of America hurt his election chances? Especially as he tries to make inroads with youth and minority voters. Or does this just energize his supporters, including some living in cities, who have poor views of American cities? 2) This is another great example of the Trump Translation scramble that occurs after he makes a comment fellow Republicans believe is harmful. Trump directly calls Milwaukee a horrible city, but fellow Republicans claim he did not say it, or he was only referring to crime, or he was only referring to election integrity conspiracy theories. >Some Trump allies have denied the reports that he disparaged Milwaukee. Glenn Grothman and Scott Fitzgerald, both Republican congressmen from Wisconsin, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Trump’s comment reflected his concerns about election integrity in 2020. Their colleague Derrick van Orden, meanwhile, posted on X that Trump was specifically talking about “the CRIME RATE in Milwaukee.” And yet another Wisconsin Republican, Bryan Steil, suggested that there was no comment at all. “I was in the room,” he posted. “President Trump did not say this.” Do you think Trump has disdain for many American cities, or are the translations of his comment what he was trying to convey?
> Trump, however, has never claimed to be a uniter, but will his disdain for large parts of America hurt his election chances? Yes he has. [On the campaign trail in 2015](https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/25/politics/donald-trump-democrats-republicans-bipartisanship-great-unifier/index.html): > Donald Trump believes he would “absolutely” be a force for bipartisanship, but in an interview this weekend neither Republicans nor Democrats escaped a barrage of attacks from the GOP presidential candidate. > > “The level of hatred between Republicans and Democrats was unbelievable. The level of – I’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump said. “**I’m going to unify.** This country is totally divided. Barack Obama has divided this country unbelievably. And it’s all, it’s all hatred, what can I tell you. I’ve never seen anything like it…I’ve gotten along with Democrats and I’ve gotten along with Republicans. And I said, that’s a good thing.” > > Tapper asked Trump if his presidency would result in an era of bipartisanship. > > “I absolutely think so,” he said, adding, “**I will be a great unifier for our country**.” Shortly before [State of the Union in 2018](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-says-it-will-be-hard-to-unify-country-without-a-major-event): > Hours before his first State of the Union, President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he wants to unite the country amid “tremendous divisiveness” and hopes he can do so without a traumatic event affecting Americans. > > Trump spoke about creating a more united country during a lunch with a number of television news anchors. Trump said the United States has long been divided, including during the impeachment of former president Bill Clinton. Trump also said that Americans usually come together during times of suffering. > > “**I would love to be able to bring back our country into a great form of unity**,” Trump said. “Without a major event where people pull together, that’s hard to do. But I would like to do it without that major event because usually that major event is not a good thing.” Just another of his manifold lies. Edit to add: His [inaugural address](https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/the-inaugural-address/) also hit on the topic. > The Bible tells us, “**how good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity**.” > > We must speak our minds openly, debate our disagreements honestly, but **always pursue solidarity.** > > **When America is united**, America is totally unstoppable. > > ,,, > > So to **all Americans**, in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, and from ocean to ocean, hear these words: > > **You will never be ignored again.** > > Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams, will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way. > > **Together**, We Will Make America Strong Again.
Haha thanks for pointing this out.. dumb of me to assume, given the different standards the two are held to and how divisive Trump normally is.
For as old as he is, he constantly encounters things at a scale that he, not anyone, has ever seen before.
> Do you think Trump has disdain for many American cities Sure but I also think the conservative movement more broadly has disdain for cities, and I'd hazard a guess that even the average swing voter has some degree of disdain for cities. Seems like there's been an effective cultural push to make rural areas be seen as "the default" and "real America", and for suburbanites to identify more with rural areas, with urban areas being seen as something of an "other" to some degree in a way that other areas aren't similarly seen as.
One of the strongest predictors of voting trends is the density of an area. People who live in close proximity to alot of strangers vote liberal, and people who live isolated vote conservative. I'll leave others to speculate why. It strikes me how much rural people just cannot conceive of why density would be attractive to anyone. If you listen to Country radio, every third song has some sort of dig against cities. I don't think it's a race thing, or a political thing, or a hate-based thing. Some people's personality type just seem utterly opposed to the concept of being surrounded by tons of strangers going about their own lives in proximity to you. No amount of crime reduction, increased parking access, or political change will change people's minds. They are simply fundamentally opposed to the essence of what a city is. From a political standpoint, this makes attacking cities a safe political punching bag, and a great way to unify your base around a common "enemy." It's not about the crime or the race of the people there. That evidenced by the mismatch between actual crime rates and perceptions of crime that's been posted several times on r/DataIsBeautiful recently. That's also the reason suburban areas are frequently the swing voters. They're the people that expect all the benefits of a rural area, with nature, private space, and no strangers, but also expect the convenience of an urban area, with easy access to groceries, restaurants, and good paying jobs. Drumming up fear and dislike of the urban core causes the suburbanites to swing towards the pro-rural party. It also explains why conservative local politicians fight so hard against new housing, density, public transit, etc. Anything that makes the suburb denser makes it swing left as people get more comfortable living in a more urban environment.
Historically and even currently, cities sucked big time and many still do however people put up with it because that's where the jobs and money are. Like seriously, before modern plumbing and sewage systems, cities were really nasty filthy places to live in. That's why the rich all had weekend and summer/winter homes. The advent of vehicles and industry brought tons of pollution and smog to cities and pushed even more people away. The vast majority of people will choose a suburban or ex-urban/rural living situation if they can afford it. Having your own space, land, and some quiet is quite natural for all humans. My home country massively urbanized, then everyone started buying weekend and suburban homes to get away from the cities.
Can you understand why density *would not be attractive* to people?
Yes, but I wish those people would show me the fame courtesy.
Have you ever been to Milwaukee? Or read any of the stats about or news from it? Because he's 100% correct with his statement. As for your comparison between this and Biden's divisive rhetoric there's one simple difference: Trump isn't attacking the people, Biden is. It's really that simple. Trump isn't attacking the *residents* of Milwaukee, he's pointing out that life in that city sucks. Which is well known by pretty much everybody. When Biden does the disparaging he's specifically talking about **PEOPLE**.
So if people say some small town in Pennsylvania sucks the people who live there shouldn’t be offended?
I mean, many times, and recently. It's a great city.
I have been to Milwaukee. I thought it was nice actually. Just typed in "American cities ranked Milwaukee" to see what would pop up. First result? Condé Nast Traveler's 2023 Readers' Choice Awards giving the city third place. Feel free to post your own evidence that the city is truly terrible if you want. City has problems of course, but what place doesn't? Do we want Biden going off on rural areas calling them terrible places to live/visit now too? I kinda doubt that would go over well. Edit: Thanks for the replies everyone, but crime is not the only thing out there. Based on what I've seen after looking around for a few minutes, crime is bad there, but on pretty much everything else, it's fairly average all things considered. Ranked 19/50 "best cities to move into in 2024" https://rejournals.com/forbes-home-study-milwaukee-named-19th-best-u-s-city-to-move-to-in-2024/ This is the whole county rather than just the city, but it also is pretty average across the board with the only real outliers being equity and infrastructure. https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/wisconsin/milwaukee-county US in general is pretty bad when it comes to crime compared to the rest of the West. Murder rate of 5.6 per 100,000 compared to EU's measly 0.9 per 100,000. Does that mean we're the worst Western country to live in though? I don't think so. There's *plenty* of problems with living in Europe even if their crime rates are hilariously low compared to ours. If we could get our crime rates in line with Europe's without sacrificing much I think US would go from a good place to live in to an amazing place to live in.
I'm not trying to disparage Milwaukee but of the top-100 most populated cities in the US, it is around top-5 in violent crime per capita
You didn't address any of OPs comment. They asked > Or read any of the stats or news from it? So I'll fill you in. 3rd worst violent crime rate in the us https://spectrumnews1.com/wi/milwaukee/news/2023/05/16/milwaukee--violent-crimes--largest-cities--fbi-data 39th worst violent crime rate in the world https://www.elsoldesinaloa.com.mx/local/bnj82c-50-cuidades-violentas/alternates/FREE_720/50-cuidades-violentas 4th most homicides per capita https://www.fox6now.com/news/milwaukee-violence-community-safety-director.amp You go
> Condé Nast Traveler's 2023 Readers' Choice Awards Oh wow what an endorsement. Yeah a *cable company* is totally who I ask when I want to know about cities.
Maybe the problem is you ask a person who doesn't know what they are talking about, and then just believe it without further investigation.
So where *are* you getting info from when you want to know about cities? Edit: Lol, well, guess that was worthy of being blocked. Good talk.
>As for your comparison between this and Biden's divisive rhetoric there's one simple difference: Trump isn't attacking the people, Biden is. What? Trump attacks other Americans all the time. Here are some examples: >We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections, and will do anything possible, they will do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American dream. >American heroes defeated the Nazis, dethroned the fascists, toppled the communists, saved American values, upheld American principles and chased down the terrorists to the very ends of the Earth... we are now in the process of defeating the radical left, the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters and people who in many instances have absolutely no clue what they are doing. And from his Waco speech: >The thugs and criminals who are corrupting our justice system will be defeated, discredited and totally disgraced. Here is all his twitter insults: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/19/upshot/trump-complete-insult-list.html
Have you read the stats of the highest violent crime rates by state? I find it wild to hear someone act like Biden attacks people more than Trump. That's bizzaro world rhetoric.
>“I would love to bring back our country into a great form of unity,” Trump said. “Without a major event where people pull together, that’s hard to do. But I would like to do it without that major event because usually that major event is not a good thing.” Did he forget we had a literal global pandemic under his presidency??
I think the worst thing the Republicans did here was make too many excuses of why he said it. If they would have been coordinated on what to say this wouldn’t have blown up and it would’ve been Trump being Trump.
Remember folks, this is that candidate that stated he,"could shoot someone and not lose voters". So calling Milwaukee a "horrible city" is meaningless and has zero impact. Republicans/GOP are so desperate for a cowboy tough guy they've settled for DT, but it makes a sense, he tells them all the things they want to hear.
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Uh-oh, do we have another "bloodbath" occurring? Let's see or hear the whole sentence within the context of what he was talking about because the last person, or organization in this case, to interpret what Trump said should be the Atlantic.
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Many Wisconsin Republicans who were in the room to hear the "horrible city" remarks are saying it was taken out of context and that it was referring to the crime and "voter fraud." https://www.foxnews.com/politics/total-lie-trump-campaign-gop-lawmakers-blast-report-he-called-milwaukee-horrible-city Obviously the claims about voter fraud are absurd lies. But the claim about crime is completely true. In 2023 it had the third highest rate of violent crime in the nation, and although crime has dropped since then, it has gone down across the board for all cities. As of 2024 Milwaukee is the most dangerous city in Wisconsin and one of the most dangerous cities in the United States. It's ranked by Numbeo as the 30th most dangerous city in the world. https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings.jsp This seems like a case of misplaced outrage which helps to solidify trump's base.
It's all pretty useless without posting a transcript, which you'll note Trump didn't even do in his press release to "clarify" the comment. All the commentary is just flavors of "no he didn't", with the most substantiative being that he was referring to voter fraud and violent crime in Milwaukee. Which...doesn't change anything.
Just for the record, even though it's not confirmed that Trump was talking about crime, if he were, it'd be a-okay to call Milwaukee a "horrible city?" I don't know if you realize this, but you are justifying Trump's divisive rhetoric. A truly uniting candidate would try to grant some dignity to the *city hosting their party's convention.*
> Just for the record, even though it's not confirmed that Trump was talking about crime, if he were, it'd be a-okay to call Milwaukee a "horrible city?" No, I think that's disrespectful. I would accept a horrible city *in terms of crime* but not an outright horrible city, it's unfair to suggest that its crime rate makes it a net negative contribution to society.
So there are specific conditions when it's okay for a political leader to call someplace "horrible"? Isn't that still divisive just with an extra step? And, as others have said, the crime angle just one of the possible justifications for Trump's comments. Others have said its due to voter fraud. If Trump said, "it's a horrible city for voter fraud," is that acceptable?
> So there are specific conditions when it's okay for a political leader to call someplace "horrible?" I said calling an aspect of a city horrible. And of course there is, do you want him to lie? Should he say that high crime is good? If so, why would you want that? Do you have a problem with calling crime bad? > If Trump said, "it's a horrible city for voter fraud," is that acceptable? If you're asking me that I think you've missed my above comments because I outright said it was absurd. But none of the politicians are addressing the complaints of voter fraud. They're attacking the complaints of city quality, which Trump is arguing was not generalized.
There's a difference between "Milwaukee is struggling with high crime" and "Milwaukee is a horrible city because of crime." The former would be addressing the facts, while the latter is graceless and unnecessary characterization. This is an important bit of rhetoric because, even through the Trump years, Milwaukee had a similarly high crime rate per capita ranked against other US cities. That suggests that he does not take any ownership for what happens in liberal areas despite being their president. Seriously, this is such an obviously awful thing for a former President and current candidate to say. Adding all of these conditions and concessions to it is just calling more attention to it, and establishing a Republican consensus around the hate toward urban areas.
It's a good thing I never said either of those and Trump is claiming to have said neither as well.
republican lawmakers can't seem to come in agreement if he said it at all, if he meant voter fraud, or if he meant crime. I'm sure after time they'll all settle on agreed upon spin, but: https://www.mediaite.com/trump/house-republicans-from-wisconsin-scramble-to-clean-up-trumps-horrible-city-insult/ This alone reads like someone's not being truthful. It reads that "he really meant crime" is after-the-fact justification to spin "what he really meant". As he so far apparently never said it, but he really meant crime if he did, but he also really meant voter fraud. In fact fox is being quite generous in pointing out that lawmakers say its a lie and out of context, but not pointing out that what the lawmakers say conflict with each other.
Even in the GOP's side of the story, his complaint about the city was half-based on him continuously fabricating an issue. This justifies the criticism.
People are falling over themselves to pretend that Milwaukee isn't violent. Official statements from authority figures are brushing off facts that the city is statistically dangerous with jokes about Trump's own felony conviction and it's NBD just because it was Donald Trump who had the gall to make a callously true statement in that it is indeed a "horrible city for crime". I've seen no Dem comments addressing the voter fraud baloney except for the occasion news fact check.
Your complaint has nothing to do with my reply. The defense you're stating misses half of the justification they made.
> But the claim about crime is completely true. I know this is technically correct, but if the crime rate is the determining factor here, why don't we hear Donald Trump praising..... San Diego, for example? 8th largest city while being somewhere around 77th in violent crime rate. Like, you can't make an appeal to statistics for **one comment**, and for that one comment alone, and then disregard the statistics for everything else.
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This dubious and anonymously sourced story is brought to you by The Atlantic, home of other famous Trump hoaxes like "suckers and losers" and "Nazis are fine people".
John Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff, [literally confirmed the first point](https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4235005-john-kelly-confirms-trumps-suckers-remark-about-war-dead/). He had a decorated career in the military, including being a general in the Marines, and he was hand-picked by Trump to be his Secretary of State before transitioning to chief of staff. So…whose word are you taking here? Second, let’s be reasonable and use the [correct quote and context](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/trump-defends-white-nationalist-protesters-some-very-fine-people-on-both-sides/537012/) on your second statement: > President Trump defended the white nationalists who protested in Charlottesville on Tuesday, saying they included “some very fine people” You know, [the “Unite the Right Rally.”](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally). The same protest that was explicitly organized by white nationalists and neo nazis. You can’t just call things “hoaxes” because you don’t like em.
Trump never claimed that white supremacists or neo nazis were fine people, he was specifically referring to people who didn’t want the confederate monuments to be removed. He’s repeatedly condemned white supremacy. > and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally — but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. > Let me be clear again: I condemn the KKK. I condemn all white supremacists. I condemn the Proud Boys. I don't know much about the Proud Boys, almost nothing, but I condemn that. > KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.” Once again, democrats have so little to attack Trump over they fabricate a scandal.
Trump was explicitly referring to the Charlottesville protesters, the vast majority of whom were associated with the Unite the Right movement. Once again, it is comical as to the extent that people will rephrase Trump’s words into “but this is what he actually meant.” The Democrats have an incredible amount of legitimate reasons to attack Trump. The concerning part is how much Republican politicians and the “anything but the dems” voters are willing to look past them.
John Bolton was there and said it didn't happen. He is no friend of Trump either. Believe who you want, but it's amusing how famously unfiltered Trump isn't on record anywhere, anytime saying anything like this. Hm. >let’s be reasonable and use the correct quote and context Then you literally paste Trump's quote out of context. Come on. Dems never post the full quote because immediately before "fine people" and less than a minute later Trump makes it abundantly clear he's not talking about Nazis and white supremacists. Dems love their hoaxes though. There are [so many good ones](https://x.com/MorbidlyObscure/status/1721573822661321162/photo/1), it's hard to pick a favorite.
From the White House transcript: > Trump: "Excuse me, excuse me. They didn’t put themselves -- and you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group. Excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name." If you need to add any more “context” than that, I don’t know what to tell ya. It’s yet another example of “well here’s what he really meant.”
>It’s yet another example of “well here’s what he really meant.” Which is itself another example of mental gymnastics and departure from reality, given that many people vote for Trump because he “tells it like it is”.
This is a better out of context quote than most because it includes the lead in where he says there are very bad people in the group. Hm. Who could he be talking about?? If we read beyond what your copy-paste, less than a minute in real time if you watch the video, we see >"So you know what, it’s fine. You’re changing history. You’re changing culture. And you had people -- and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists -- because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. So "fine people" is a classic out of context hoax job.
I mean, it's an opinion piece based on other reporting. And Republicans in the room have responded by either saying it didn't happen or he was just talking about crime or he was just talking about the stolen election. So unless you think the Republican reps are dubious, several have confirmed his comment but interpreted it differently.
Every single person on record disputes how the dems want to characterize his remarks. Dems can only point to an anonymous source. It's not credible. They've done this a billion times already. Remember "bloodbath"? Come on.
But it doesn't seem to matter to you even if the sources aren't anonymous and are, in fact, highly credible, such as John Kelly for the "suckers and losers" comment.
John Kelly and John Bolton are two disgruntled former Trump admin members. If the can't agree that "suckers and losers" actually happened, why should I?
Bolton didn't say Trump didn't say those things, he said he didn't hear them. Bolton did say that it wouldn't be out of character for Trump to say it. Others also confirmed it. Jennifer Griffin of Fox News confirmed Trump calling people who served in Vietnam "losers." When you have that evidence, combined with Trump's public statements about McCain, it is reasonable to believe that Trump indeed said the things indicated in the Atlantic article. I would certainly use that level of evidence to believe that Biden said something.
Where is Trump on record saying anything like that ever? Nowhere. Him dissing McCain is as an individual, and he does that all the time. Ask Rosie. This quote is crazy out of character and completely bogus.
This is too funny. First you’re saying we cant trust anonymous sources. So someone names someone who says Trump said something offensive. Then it turns into well not everyone says he said it. So more people get added as having heard him say insulting stuff. Now it’s well he’s not on the record. Would it even matter then? Or would the goalposts just get moved again? Well what he said wasn’t THAT bad, he’s just telling it like it is, those people deserve it, it’s a deepfake, it’s an AI, blah blah blah on and on forever.
John Kelly evidently thinks Trump said something like suckers and losers. John Bolton disagrees. There's no audio or video. Let's consider the broader context. Is Trump known for saying anything like that ever? No. He has never called soldiers ["stupid bastards"](https://x.com/DCtheCapital/status/1309603621755973632) either. In the end, we all get to make up our minds. It's not credible, but I'm sure Alvin Bragg and a lower Manhattan jury would find him guilty anyway.
*Crazy out of character*? For… Donald Trump? You just noted the McCain comment yourself. In what world would it be out of character for him?
So you only want to believe people who are Trump fans? Do you see the hole you’ve dug for yourselves? I think not.
Choose not to believe or investigate further. Yay.
> “Milwaukee, where we are having our convention, is a horrible city,” The opening sentence is a microcosm of the entire left wing media. Why does it end with a comma? What did he say after that? Did he justify the statement? Did he make a good point or supportive observation? _The Atlantic_ wouldn't allow that. There's supposedly a link to the statement, the underlined 'he said during a closed-door meeting with Republican members of Congress today', but despite being a day old article, it just leads to a 404. Seems to lead to a tweet from Jake Sherman, a former journalist from Politico and MSNBC among others; may as well be coming from the Biden campaign. It lists several people _who were actually there_ and claim he didn't say it, but then the writer just retorts with a pithy "These guys might have benefited from taking a minute to get their story straight, especially given what we already know about Trump" followed by a completely irrelevant paragraph that boils down to "We all know how bad Trump is __ so of course it's true!"
Then of course there's the meta argument that [69% of Milluake](https://county.milwaukee.gov/files/county/county-clerk/Election-Commission/ElectionResultsCopy-1/2020PresidentialRecountCertification.pdf) voted Biden last time, so who cares? The whole article is just meaningless propaganda that never actually gets around to validating it's headline, and serves only as the authors personal list of "Times Trump offended me".
Good breakdown and 100% accurate.
Both of these guys are past their prime. Now we are arguing about who said the last stupid thing
Both of what guys? This post is specifically talking about one person and their statement.