Mugshot backdrop. Exuberant supporters cheered wildly at Trump’s claim of a nation in imminent peril. The auditorium was at the750 maximum capacity allowed by the state fire marshal.
Vows to “liberate Wisconsin” from migrant “invasion”
PRAIRIE DU CHEIN, Wis. – Former President Donald Trump promised to “liberate Wisconsin from the mass migrant invasion” in a campaign rally with heated rhetoric. A surge of migrants is “poisoning the blood of the country,” he said at a rally in Prairie du Chien. Trump blamed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris for “an unprecedented surge in illegal immigration” across the Mexico border. (Fact check: Migration at the Mexico border remains its lowest since 2020, according the Customs and Border Patrol.) Fans packed a 750-seat theater for Trump with oversize mugshots of male Latinos accused of violent crimes. One mugshot was of Alejandro Jose Coronel Zarate, who was arrested three weeks ago in Prairie du Chien and charged – though not yet convicted — of rape and assault on his traveling companion and her daughter.
“I will liberate Wisconsin from the mass migrant invasion. We’re going to liberate the country.”
Trump was savage against the Biden-Harris team that defeated his 2020 bid for re-election: “Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way.” The crowd loved the wildly excessive characterizations.
“Kamala Harris can never be forgiven for her erasing our border and she must never be allowed to become president of the United States. She’s letting in people who are going to walk into your house, break into your door.”
Harris is “erasing our border,” he said. About Democratic criticism that he was responsible when he was president for taking thousands of children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border in a policy that has been globally condemned as inhumane, Trump said he had no idea what the critics are talking about. Trump failed to mention that in February he personally torpedoed a bipartisan plan developed in Congress to help solve border issues. The bill was on track for passage when Trump ordered his Republican pinions to switch gears and withdraw their support rather than for him to lose the border issue as a cornerstone of his presidential campaign. The legislation failed.