Some Donald Trump supporters took naps on the sidewalk outside his rally in Racine, Wisconsin on Tuesday waiting for their shot to be one of the first few inside.
Hundreds showed up in the early morning hours for the rally 30 miles outside of Milwaukee just days after Trump reportedly called it a ‘horrible city’ during a meeting with Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill last week.
One rally goer outside the Racine Festival Park showed off a thigh tattoo reading ‘Made in America’ below a portrait of Trump.
Several other supporters donned black and prison orange t-shirts with the ex-president’s Georgia mugshot and messages encouraging Trump to ‘Never Surrender’ despite the four criminal cases against him.
The Wisconsin rally comes less than a month after a jury in Manhattan found Trump guilty of 34 felony charges for falsification of business records related to a hush money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
A supporter at the Racine, Wisconsin rally on Tuesday showed off his thigh tattoo with a portrait of Donald Trump with the words: ‘Made in America’
Rally goers lined-up hours before entry into the event opened, and some took naps while waiting for their shot to be one of the first inside the Racine Festival Park
Trump is set to return to Wisconsin next month for the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee where he is expected to officially become the party’s nominee for 2024.
Wisconsin is a vital battleground in November and one of the states critical to winning the White House in 2024.
Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 by just 0.7 percent. But the state swung blue in 2020 for President Joe Biden by a margin of 0.6 percent.
‘Thousands of Wisconsinites are going to gather in Racine to show their support for President Donald J. Trump,’ Republican National Committee (RNC) Spokesperson Jacob Fischer said in a statement ahead of Trump’s arrival.
‘In less than one month, tens of thousands will gather in Wisconsin as President Trump formally accepts the Republican nomination,’ he added. ‘His America First agenda will end Joe Biden’s crippling inflation, sky-high prices, the border crisis, and rampant crime, Making America Great Again.’
Some outcry ensued after Trump called Milwaukee a ‘horrible city’ during a meeting with GOP lawmakers in Washington, D.C. last Thursday. But Trump’s campaign, as well as many of those in the Capitol Hill Club event with the ex-president claim the comment was taken out of context by media.
‘In a desperate attempt to get likes, Fake News Jake Sherman—who wasn’t even in the room—falsely claimed that President Trump called Milwaukee a ‘horrible city.’ It’s a total lie,’ Trump’s Deputy Communications Director Dylan Johnson wrote.
He added: ‘President Trump was explicitly referring to the problems in Milwaukee, specifically violent crime and voter fraud.’
Trump still faces three more cases with dozens more felony charges against him in Georgia, Washington D.C. and Florida.
Many waiting in line wore ‘Never Surrender’ shirts with images of Trump’s infamous mug shot from the case against him in Georgia
Others donned shirts splattered with images of the former president and others wore general patriotic or pro-Trump garb
As temperatures rose to the high 80s before Trump’s arrival in Wisconsin on Tuesday, a video played of the former president encouraging his supporters to ‘make a plan’ to vote if they aren’t able to make it out on Election Day in November.
After years of decrying the fraud that surrounds mail-in voting, Trump is now pressing his base to embrace the tool in order to ‘swamp’ Democrats in the 2024 election.
‘Keep your eyes open because these people want to cheat,’ Trump said in the clip played to the trickling-in audience.
