It is alleged that President Trump referred to Milwaukee, Wisconsin as “a horrible city.”
The first issue is whether Trump said that as a general statement or not. Left-wing news media have reported Trump’s alleged statement as a matter of fact ever since it was reported in the left-wing Punchbowl News media platform. It spread through the anti-Trump media sphere like Covid in a nursing home. Trump denies having made such a broad statement about Milwaukee.
What Trump actually said – and in what context – has never been proven. The story came out of a closed-door meeting from third parties – essentially a rumor.
Participants in the meeting said that Trump was speaking of crime and other conditions in Milwaukee as horrible. That would not be a slam against the city, but an accurate description of the crime problem. Trump and Republicans lay the blame for such “horrible conditions” at the feet of the municipal leaders. And again, that is not necessarily an inaccurate opinion.
Whether “horrible” is the right word to describe the conditions in Milwaukee — or any of the other major Democrat-controlled cities is debatable. What is not debatable is that conditions in those cities are … not good.
Most of those cities are suffering from years of reckless spending – resulting in huge deficits and exorbitantly high taxes. Municipal services are being cut. Homeless people – many with mental health and drug issues – are taking over swaths of the public commons. Crime rages even in the face of modest decreases in recent months. The major cities have the worst public school systems in America – especially in the segregated Black and Hispanic neighborhoods. Which brings up the remnants of institutional or systemic de facto racism that oppressed the segregated Black population for more than 150 years.
The terrible conditions in the major cities – that impact on all residents, but most harshly on poor minorities – are found in all the statistics. But nothing gives greater evidence of the terrible conditions than the people and the businesses that are fleeing — voting with their feet.
Not since what has been called “the great migration” of freed slaves moving out of the southern states after the Compromise of 1877 — when Democrats imposed brutal one-party Jim Crow rule over the south — has there been a greater internal migration of American citizens than what we have seen in recent years.
Millions of Americans are pulling up stakes and moving to other places in an effort to find better living conditions – with lower taxes, lower costs, better schools, less crime and generally better living conditions. This contemporary great migration has folks abandoning cities in which their families have lived for generations.
Is there a partisan political underpinning that is motivating this migration? Indeed, there is. We see it in the simple fact that the migrating population is leaving cities and states that have been under Democrat control for generations. They are moving to cities and states that are predominantly Republican. That is the inconvenient fact that those on the left ignore and even deny. But long-term left-wing Democrat governance has made America’s great cities undesirable to the people. And the more the policies, the greater the dissatisfaction and the greater the exodus.
I would not call Milwaukee a horrible city any more than I would broadbrush any American city as “horrible.” They all have cultures and wonderful attributes. That is true of my hometown of Chicago. I love that city but would never move back to live there. More and more, America’s large Democrat-run cities are living up to the saying, “It is a great place to visit, but I would not want to live there.“
As usual, Trump has made a point – badly expressed, perhaps. Nothing new in that. All I can say is that Milwaukee is a wonderful city with some horrible problems. I always enjoyed visiting Milwaukee, just would not want to live there.
So, there ‘tis.