Tag: wisconsin
GOP Officials In Wisconsin Town Reject Trump's 'Third World Hell Hole' Slur

GOP Officials In Wisconsin Town Reject Trump's 'Third World Hell Hole' Slur

In September, Donald Trump, JD Vance, and MAGA allies publicly pushed the debunked claim that Haitian migrants in the town of Springfield, Ohio — population 57,910 — are eating people's pets.

According to a Sunday, November 3 Politico report, the former president has recently taken aim at an even smaller town: Whitewater, Wisconsin.

With a population of approximately "15,000 in the southeastern part of the Badger state," Politico reports, "Trump said the price of housing in Whitewater had 'soared,' 'diseases are spreading like wildfire' and 'police can’t handle the surge in crime' after being 'flooded … with an estimated 2,000 migrants from Venezuela and Nicaragua, very tough ones, very tough people in that group.'"

Per the report, "local officials, many of whom are nonpartisan or Republicans, have refuted his characterizations and slammed the former president for rhetoric they say distracts from the real problems they are facing" — repeatedly.

"If Kamala is reelected, your town and every town just like it all across Wisconsin and all across our country — the heartland, the coast, it doesn’t matter — will be transformed into a Third World hell hole,'" the MAGA hopeful emphasized during a rally in the nearby city of Prairie du Chien.

"I mean this in all respect to everyone in their beliefs and where they’re at," Whitewater city manager John Weidl told Politico, "but it’s like regular people wandering around Whitewater. It’s all very normal. And sure, there’s more people who speak Spanish, but we had people who spoke Spanish before."

Another city official, Whitewater police chief Dan Meyer, according to the report, "refuted Trump’s claim that there had been a crime surge in the town. While the influx of about 1,000 migrants has posed challenges to the 24 police officers there, he said, it’s mainly been due to unlicensed drivers and a lack of translators. The immigrant 'population, generally speaking, is no more likely to commit a crime than any other [member of] the existing population we have here,' he said."

Politicoreports:

Trump and his allies first jumped on Whitewater after Meyer and Weidl sent a letter to President Joe Biden last year requesting federal resources to address challenges the city faced due to the quick demographic change. 'None of this information is shared as a means of denigrating or vilifying this group of people,' Meyer wrote, adding: 'In fact, we see great value in the increasing diversity that this group brings to our community.' Days later, the right-wing outlet Breitbart ran an article with the headline 'Biden floods small Wisconsin town with 1,000 migrants.'

Meyer emphasized, "I really think the vast majority of people are supportive' of the immigrant population, and those who aren’t probably haven’t had a whole lot of interactions, or have had a few interactions that weren’t all that positive. But it’s not based on anything other than perception."

27-year-old Keylin Sarahi told Politico that she eventually arrived in Whitewater after fleeing threats of violence in Nicaragua.

"It’s a very peaceful place, very pretty," Sarahi said.

Meyer emphasized, "I really think the vast majority of people are supportive' of the immigrant population, and those who aren’t probably haven’t had a whole lot of interactions, or have had a few interactions that weren’t all that positive. But it’s not based on anything other than perception."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

On Wisconsin Jobs, Biden Won And Trump Lost -- So Fox Whines About 'Trolling'

On Wisconsin Jobs, Biden Won And Trump Lost -- So Fox Whines About 'Trolling'

President Joe Biden traveled to Wisconsin on Wednesday to announce a new multibillion-dollar project by Microsoft, which stands in contrast to a notorious failure of local economic development in the state during the Trump administration. In response, Fox News’ purported “straight news” coverage accused Biden of “trying to troll” the public and otherwise dismissed the new project.

Biden traveled to Racine County to tout Microsoft’s $3.3 billion investment in a data center, which builds on other university partnerships and business projects the company has in the state. Notably, the data center will be constructed on land that was previously allocated for a factory to be built by Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn, in a deal pushed in 2017 by then-President Donald Trump and then-Gov. Scott Walker (R).

“Foxconn turned out to be just that,” Biden said Wednesday. “A con.”

The Vergereported in 2020 on the colossal failure of the Foxconn project. Though state and local governments spent at least $400 million on land and infrastructure, the factory never went into operation. And, far short of the 13,000 jobs that were promised, the company had hired fewer than 300 people by the end of 2019 and made a failed attempt to fill out its payrolls enough to qualify for state tax subsidies.

On the May 8 edition of MSNBC’s All In, host Chris Hayes said the Foxconn deal — along with many other Trump promises about saving jobs, reviving American manufacturing, or building important infrastructure — was “a big, glitzy announcement that turns into nothing.”

Hayes also revisited Trump’s remarks at a 2018 groundbreaking event in Racine County, in which he claimed the factory would be “the eighth wonder of the world.”

In Fox News’ telling, however, it was Biden’s event, rather than Trump’s failed promises on the Foxconn deal, that was politically suspect, and a cover-up for a supposedly failing economy to boot. (The American economy is objectively strong, despite the right-wing smear campaign to convince the public otherwise.)

  • Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner said people in Racine should ask the president why his economic policy “doesn’t … work for us, the American people.” “If anybody would like to raise their hand there — you don’t need to be a reporter, just be a citizen who is curious,” Faulkner said. “Mr. President, why doesn’t your economic policy work for us, the American people? Why is it not working for millions of people? And do you know when you wipe away the tax breaks you’re gonna hurt middle-class Americans too?” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 5/8/24]
  • Fox News White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich claimed that Biden “turned to a new strategy of trying to troll voters” by touting the new data center at the site of the failed Foxconn project: “Is that what he’s left with, to just troll Trump?” Fox News anchor John Roberts added that the Microsoft AI center is “scheduled to be built — we’ll see if they actually break ground on it. We’ll find out soon.” Roberts then dismissed Biden’s remarks on job creation, saying, “Take off the rose-colored aviators” and changing the subject to attack Biden on the issue of inflation. [Fox News, America Reports, 5/8/24]
  • Fox Business host and former Trump administration economic adviser Larry Kudlow accused Biden of “trying to buy votes” while defending Trump’s failure on the Foxconn project. “And I might add, the Trump years, the money was allocated to Foxconn, but the foreign investor pulled out so it never got done,” Kudlow said. “So, such is life, nothing you can do about that.” (Right-wing commentators often accuse Democrats of “buying votes” through various government programs, even as people like Kudlow defend economic interventions by Republican administrations regardless of whether they succeeded or failed.) [Fox Business, The Big Money Show, 5/8/24; Media Matters, 9/29/15, 4/9/24]
  • Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

    Eric Hovde

    Wisconsin GOP Senate Wannabe Keeps Predicting Recessions That Don't Happen

    Sunwest Bank CEO Eric Hovde, a potential challenger to Wisconsin Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, is slated to address the bank’s Annual Economic Forum in Newport Beach, California, on Thursday.

    Hovde will deliver the keynote address at the event, an announcement for which says that attendees will “Gain clear insights on the U.S. economy, real estate, global markets, and more.”

    So far, however, Hovde’s predictions about the U.S. economy have been less than accurate.

    Hovde ran for the U.S. Senate in 2012. In a radio ad for his unsuccessful campaign, he asserted that a government default on the national debt was imminent and would likely lead to a global depression.

    In a March 2012 interview on the “Vicki McKenna Show” in Madison, Wisconsin, he said the U.S. would face a debt crisis similar to one in Greece within the next three to four years. In another appearance on McKenna’s program, he warned the national debt would lead to anarchy in the streets within the next five years.

    Hovde made an even more dire prediction in a July 2012 appearance on a show hosted by right-wing host Charlie Sykes, saying the U.S. would fall into recession within the next 12 months.

    None of these predictions came to fruition.

    Hovde’s alarmist predictions were not limited to his political campaign. In 2022, he told the Business Observer website in Florida that he believed the U.S. was on the brink of a global recession.

    “I think we’re headed into a global recession, where there are really no bright spots,” Hovde said. “I think this recession is going to go longer and be more severe and last a minimum of 18 months, and probably more likely 24 to 36 months.”

    In April, Hovde predicted recession again but this time said it would be partially caused by energy policy.

    “Until we truly get to the heart of inflation and start changing some of our economic and energy policies, then we may enter a recession this year, and I think we will be stuck in this difficult slowdown for some time to come,” Hovde wrote in a Sunwest Bank newsletter.
    Hovde has met with the National Republican Senatorial Committee about a possible 2024 run. He did not immediately respond to a request to comment for this story.

    Reprinted with permission from American Journal News.

    Chesebro Looked Impressive On Paper, But Sadly Had No Ethics At All

    Chesebro Looked Impressive On Paper, But Sadly Had No Ethics At All

    Where did Kenneth Chesebro come from? Son of a Wisconsin music teacher, he amassed sterling credentials, a Harvard Law degree chief among them. On paper he was impressive. But then he joined a conspiracy to overthrow the democracy. Chesebro gives credentials a bad name.

    He applied his legal skills to veil criminal activity under plausible-sounding theory — all the while covering, so he thought, his own posterior. In the end, Chesebro was charged with working on slates of faked electors to overturn results in several states.

    One can only marvel at his fancy legal spinning designed to facilitate the destruction of America's revered institutions. But being the careful lawyer he was, Chesebro told the Trump camp that the scheme "could appear treasonous." You don't say.

    What made him do it? It isn't that he had been a Democrat who went to the other side. Yes, he had helped his Harvard mentor Laurence Tribe work for Al Gore in the disputed 2000 election. If he jumped the political chasm to advocate for Donald Trump, that was his right.

    But if he truly believed in the MAGA cause, that the election was stolen, he wouldn't have agreed to flip on Trump. He would have taken the lumps and tried to defend himself in court.

    The best explanation for Chesebro's performance is simpler, and boy, it is sad.

    "He wanted to be close to the action," is how Tribe put it. He wanted attention.

    Chesebro's Ivy polish was surely a draw for Trump given the downmarket personas of his other legal advisers. There was the batty Sidney Powell, the strutting John Eastman in his jaunty hat and flapping scarf, and the pathetic Rudy Giuliani.

    Making a plea deal in the Georgia election interference case, however, puts Chesebro in the intimate company of Powell, whose swanning on TV about the plot to steal the election got so weird Trump had to fire her. Even back then, Chesebro was too smooth to join Powell in her utterly nutty claims that a dead Hugo Chavez was pulling the strings for Joe Biden. A discussion of what Powell truly believed is best left to the psychiatric profession, not the legal one.

    Chesebro reportedly did tell the Trump team that a Supreme Court ruling before Jan. 6 would be more favorable to their cause if the justices feared there would be "wild" chaos on that day. This was a reference to Trump's Dec. 19 tweet: "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!"

    What could be the harm in adding a tablespoon of intimidation into the devil's cake mix? Though Chesebro opined that there was only a 1% chance the justices would step in, appealing to them, he offered, could have "possible political value."

    Both Chesebro and Powell made plea deals to snitch on other Trump allies. They include promises not to lie at the co-defendants' trials. Back in September, Scott Hall, a Georgia bail bondsman, became the first Trump ally to plead guilty in the racketeering case.

    They're all getting sweet probation deals.

    On January 6, Chesebro donned a MAGA hat and descended on the Capital to stop the certification of the election that Joe Biden clearly won. But he will not spend a day in prison, unlike the dopes who charged past him and broke into the Capital.

    Because he knew what he was doing, Chesebro proved himself more ethically vacant than the Trumpian mobs. He applied oily legal arguments made potent by an elite education. Supporting an insurrection against the United States, he undoubtedly figured, could be a good career move.

    Chesebro now says he abhorred the violence on January 6. Wouldn't he just.

    Froma Harrop's column for Creators Syndicate appears in more than 150 newspapers. She is based at the Providence Journal. Follow her on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com.

    Reprinted with permission from Creators.

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