‘Defensive’ Trump has to stay in ‘horrible city’ after historic gaffe
Donald Trump has switched up his lodging plans for the Republican National Convention — which kicks off July 15 — after calling Milwaukee "horrible."
When the GOP powwow takes place, Trump said he will rest his "beautiful blue eyes" in Milwaukee, not Chicago.
The 45th president batted down reports that he planned to crash at his Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago.
But when reporters questioned the campaign, on Tuesday afternoon Trump's camp reversed course and confirmed he would stay in town in the crucial battleground state.
"The president is planning to stay in Milwaukee for the Convention," Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt told ABC7.
ALSO READ: EXCLUSIVE: House Republicans subpoena ex-Capitol Police intel head for Jan. 6 inquiry
The reason behind staying 90 miles away from Milwaukee was based on Trump's personal preference to stay in his own hotel. Security and logistics concerns played a factor, according to The New York Times, citing anonymous sources.
Trump has backtracked after he was caught disparaging the RNC host city of Milwaukee as a "horrible city."
And during his rally in Racine, Wisconsin on Tuesday, the former president boasted: "I'm the one that picked Milwaukee."
The city controversy stemmed from a meeting with high-powered CEOs that reportedly went sideways because Trump couldn't stay on topic. He has since tried to clean up the mess.
He has claimed after the comment that he meant it was riddled with violence and challenged its voting integrity.
"He was talking about how terrible crime and voter fraud are," his campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said.
When he first ran for president in 2016, Trump had scheduled a stop in Chicago.
That event was scuttled after thousands of attendees parted into opposing camps of pro-MAGA supporters and counter-protesters.
Trump pivots to radical new tactic in effort to win election — and freedom: report
Former President Donald Trump has taken an unusual shift in his approach to politics, wrote Jim Newell for Slate: He's actually swallowing his pride and biting his tongue to avoid attacking fellow Republicans he believes have wronged him.
This was made apparent during his visit to Capitol Hill to meet with Republican lawmakers last week — the first time he had visited since the January 6 attack.
"In the House meeting, he made a peace offering to California Rep. David Valadao, one of the two remaining House Republicans who’d voted to impeach Trump," wrote Newell. "No such peace offerings were on the table during the 2022 primaries. He endorsed Florida Rep. Laurel Lee, too, a privilege not previously granted to members of Congress who’d endorsed Ron DeSantis in the presidential primary. He congratulated South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, a former enemy whom he’d tried to take out in 2022, on her recent primary win. He joked around with Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who’d recently directly defied his wishes by moving to oust Mike Johnson as House speaker. Greene nearly swooned recollecting the interaction in an interview afterward."
This stands in stark contrast to his "chaos agent" behavior during the 2022 midterm contests, wrote Newell, where Trump attacked lawmakers who had criticized or moved to impeach him. Republicans came out of those contests with significantly fewer gains than they were hoping to have.
Moreover, he wrote, this all coincides with Trump running a campaign operation that is less drama-charged.
ALSO READ: ‘They could have killed me’: Spycraft, ballots and a Trumped-up plot gone haywire
"Think about the inside-the-campaign drama from previous cycles, and the faucet of daily stories about staff anarchy and failed efforts to control the candidate. People like Corey Lewandowski, Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Paul Manafort, Brad Parscale, and Bill Stepien became household names for their roles in overseeing the ramshackle Trump operation, the 'strategy' for which was determined by whatever the candidate had on his mind at any given moment. This year, there’s little news from inside the Trump campaign, and no one outside of politics addicts knows who Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita are."
What all this probably means, he concluded, is that "Avoiding potential jail time has a way of focusing even the most untamable of minds."
Analysis reveals source behind GOP ‘losing streak’ after colossal Georgia defeat
In a GOP runoff primary in Georgia's 2nd Congressional District on Tuesday, June 18, Chuck Hand — one of the January 6 rioters — lost badly to former Trump Administration official Wayne Johnson. Having secured the nomination, Johnson will go up against incumbent Democratic Rep. Sanford Bishop in the general election.
The primary wasn't even remotely close. Johnson defeated Hand, according to the New York Times, by around 31 percent.
In 2022, Hand was sentenced to 20 days in federal prison and six months of probation for misdemeanor charges of illegally demonstrating inside the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. During the primary, Hand didn't downplay that conviction — in fact, he treated it like a badge of honor.
READ MORE: Georgia Republican running for Congress openly 'embracing' his role in Jan. 6 riot
But MSNBC's Steve Benen, in a biting June 19 column, stresses that running on his January 6 activities did not serve Hand well.
"If it makes him feel any better," Benen argues, "Hand has a fair amount of company. It was, after all, just last month when another January 6 convict, Derrick Evans, also lost badly in a congressional primary in West Virginia. What's more, some January 6 participants were on the ballot in Virginia last year, and they lost."
The MSNBC columnist and "Rachel Maddow Show" producer continues, "A year earlier, HuffPost reported, 'Many Republican candidates who were directly linked to the deadly January 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol lost their bids for office in Tuesday's midterm elections, in a big repudiation of extremism and GOP efforts to torpedo democracy.'"
Benen notes that although some GOP candidates have successfully campaigned on their January 6 activities, they are the exception rather than the rule.
READ MORE: This 2013 rule could preclude Vermont GOP from backing Trump
"Wisconsin's Derrick Van Orden, a Trump loyalist who rallied outside the Capitol on January 6, was elected as a Republican congressman in 2022," Benen observes. "What's more, there are some other January 6 candidates on the ballot this year, and they might yet prevail. But broadly speaking, those who've tried to parlay their January 6 experiences into successful campaigns have failed. GOP primary voters in Georgia extended that losing streak yesterday."
READ MORE: Congressional candidate convicted in Jan. 6 Capitol riot case walks out on Georgia debate
Steve Benen's full MSNBC column is available at this link.
UK police arrest pair after Stonehenge sprayed with orange substance
UK police arrested two people on Wednesday after environmental activists sprayed an orange substance on Stonehenge, the renowned prehistoric UNESCO World Heritage Site in southwest England.
The Just Stop Oil protest group said a pair of its activists had "decorated Stonehenge in orange powder paint" to demand that the UK's next government legally commit to phasing out fossil fuels by 2030.
Footage posted on social media showed the activists, wearing "Just Stop Oil" branded T-shirts, spraying at least two of the megalithic monuments with the orange substance from a small canister.
The group said on social media they had used "orange cornflour" and claimed it "will soon wash away with the rain".
Wiltshire Police said in a statement it had "arrested two people following an incident at Stonehenge this afternoon".
"Officers attended the scene and arrested two people on suspicion of damaging the ancient monument.
"Our inquiries are ongoing and we are working closely with English Heritage," the police added, referring to the public body that cares for hundreds of the country's historic places, including Stonehenge.
The incident comes in the middle of the UK's general election campaign, ahead of voters going to the polls on July 4.
- 'Disgraceful' -
It drew immediate condemnation from Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who called it "a disgraceful act of vandalism to one of the UK's and the world's oldest and most important monuments".
"Just Stop Oil should be ashamed of their activists," he added.
Just Stop Oil said it had chosen to stage the action on the day before the Summer Solstice festival, when crowds gather at the site to celebrate the northern hemisphere's summer solstice.
A spokesperson for the group said that although the Labour party, which is widely expected to win next month's election, has vowed not to issue any new oil and gas drilling licences, "we all know this is not enough".
"We have to come together to defend humanity or we risk everything. That's why Just Stop Oil is demanding that our next government sign up to a legally binding treaty to phase out fossil fuels by 2030," the spokesperson added.
"Failure to commit to defending our communities will mean Just Stop Oil supporters... will join in resistance this summer, if their own governments do not take meaningful action.
"Stone circles can be found in every part of Europe, showing how we've always cooperated across vast distances -- we're building on that legacy."
