Trump drives a garbage truck to turn around Puerto Rico controversy

ASHWAUBENON — Former President Donald Trump stepped off his plane Wednesday and sat in the passenger seat of a garbage truck.

Before taking the stage here in the shadow of Lambeau Field, the former president sought to turn the tables on comments he made at his rally in New York just days earlier in which he disparaged Puerto Rico as a “floating island of trash.”

He seized on President Joe Biden's comments on Tuesday, in which Biden appeared to call Trump supporters “trash” as he responded to comments at the Trump rally. He took questions from the press while sitting in a garbage truck and wore a bright orange high-visibility vest as he spoke to about 10,000 people at the Resch Center.

“I have to start by saying that 250 million Americans are not trash,” Trump told the crowd. “My supporters are far more quality than Crooked Joe and Lying Kamala.”

Trump's wide-ranging remarks focused on illegal immigration, attacking Harris for “breaking her oath” regarding the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border and repeating his unsubstantiated claims that South American countries “have broken their mental health system.” “Drain institutions into the USA.” He said he plans to “talk to Mexico about the border and fentanyl very early” if he is elected.

The remarks were part of Trump's final message in a state he likely must win in just six days to return to the White House. Polls show the race is neck-and-neck in Wisconsin, and both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have focused on the swing state in recent months.

At the same time and some 140 miles away, Harris, along with a troupe of top musicians, was gathering followers in Madison. Both candidates are expected to return to Milwaukee on Friday.

During his 80-minute speech, Trump typically vacillated from topic to topic, claiming at several points that no wars had started in Ukraine and the Middle East under his watch, and doubling down on his plan that import tariffs could raise prices for consumers while promising to “quickly combat inflation.”

“I will never apologize for defending America,” he said. “I will protect our workers, I will protect our jobs, I will protect our borders, I will protect families and I will protect our children’s birthright to live in the richest and most powerful nation on earth.”

Trump, who has long supported in-person voting, praised Wisconsin Republicans for voting early — more than a million people across the state voted by mail — and said that if “we win Wisconsin, we win the whole thing.”

He called for a “landslide victory too big to be rigged” — a reference to his repeated false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

But he also occasionally resorted to personal attacks on Harris. Earlier in his remarks, Trump said Harris was unfit to be president and called Democrats a “wild machine.”

At one point, Trump played a video of Harris' speech at the Ellipse on the National Mall on Tuesday, in which only Harris said the words “Donald Trump.”

“That's all she talked about because all she and Joe know is failure, gloom and death,” he said, claiming without evidence that some of the approximately 75,000 attendees were paid to be there.

In a statement before the rally, Democrats called Trump “crazy” and noted that some Wisconsin Republicans had supported Harris in recent weeks. They said a second Trump term would “take away our reproductive rights” and increase costs for middle-class families.

“Donald Trump is becoming increasingly unstable and unhinged, focused on himself and his own concerns rather than American families,” said Kristi Johnston, a spokeswoman for the Harris campaign in Wisconsin.

Before the rally, thousands of supporters lined the streets a block from Lambeau Field. Many wore red MAGA hats and some had T-shirts with a photo of Trump with his fist raised in the moments after the July 13 attack. One man wore a wig made from Trump's golden hair.

Many of the nearly two dozen participants who spoke to the Journal Sentinel acknowledged the neck-and-neck race in competitive Wisconsin. However, they pointed to the long line outside the Resch Center as evidence of the former president's support.

“I'm a little nervous,” said James Renner, who drove to the rally from Marquette, Michigan. “But over the course of the last two elections – before that – there has definitely been a shift in the way people react to Trump and how much more people are supporting Trump.”

“I’m confident Trump will win,” said Ken Sieglaff of De Pere. “He's not afraid. We need someone with backbone. He has it.”

But Republicans' attempts to change the line of attack over a comedian's comments at a Trump rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday in which he disparaged Puerto Ricans remained a consistent theme throughout the evening.

While Biden has said he calls “the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico expressed by Trump supporters at his Madison Square Garden rally as trash,” nearly every speaker on Wednesday tried to use that remark to reinforce the Democrats' closing message the last days of the year damaging the campaign.

Former Green Bay Packers legend Brett Favre referenced this remark when he said he was returning to Green Bay because “there has never been a more important time in our lives than now.”

And Sen. Ron Johnson claimed Biden's “political faux pas” shows what “he actually thinks of you.”

Still, it was largely dismissed as insignificant by some rally participants.

“I think it's (like) an unfortunate comment,” said Jamie Longsine of Green Bay, referring to a dig at Hillary Clinton in 2016. “It's a badge of honor. I consider it a badge of honor. I don’t care what he thinks.”

The Journal Sentinel's Alison Dirr contributed from Milwaukee.

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