Donald Trump repeats anti-immigrant threads at Milwaukee rally

At a Wisconsin rally on Friday, Donald Trump called Kamala Harris a “low-IQ person” and vowed to save the economy “from total obliteration” in a 1.5 hour-long meandering speech that touched on top campaign issues including the economy and foreign policy – but also featured threats to curb press freedoms and a lengthy discussion of his own rhetorical style.

“I will stop the criminal invasion of this country,” said Trump during his opening remarks, promising to usher in a new “golden age”.

“Can you imagine if Kamala won? You would go down to a 1929 style depression,” said Trump.

On immigration, Trump’s message was characteristically dark. The campaign played a painful video of a mother describing her daughter’s murder and blaming Harris for allowing the accused to enter the US without authorization. Studies overwhelmingly refute Trump’s claim that immigrants are disproportionately responsible for crime in the US, but such claims are a feature of his campaign.

“The day I take office, the migrant invasion ends,” said Trump. He vowed to launch the “largest deportation program in American history” and said cities and towns had been “conquered” by immigrants, whom he referred to as “animals”.

Since his Madison Square Garden rally – which showcased racist and misogynistic comments from a lineup of speakers, including comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” – Trump and his allies have sought to recast the former president and his Maga base as unfairly maligned.

“Kamala has spent the final week of her campaign comparing her political opponents to the most evil mass murderers in history,” said Trump at the Wisconsin rally.

“Vice-president Harris thinks you are Nazis, fascists,” said the Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson, who spoke at the rally.

Johnson praised Trump for bringing into his campaign Robert F Kennedy Jr, who ended his presidential bid as a third party candidate in August; and Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman who announced she had left the party in 2022. Johnson accused Democrats of “destroying America” and credited Trump with making “the Republican Party the party of the working men and women of America.”

Drawing applause and chants of “Bobby, Bobby, Bobby”, Kennedy addressed the crowd, reminding them that although he has left the race, he will still appear on the ballot and urging them to vote for Trump. “I said a prayer to God that he would put me in a position to end the chronic disease epidemic,” said Kennedy. “God sent me Donald J Trump.”

During his remarks, the Republican congressman Bryan Steil urged the audience to support a state constitutional amendment on the ballot in Wisconsin that would ban non-US citizens from voting in Wisconsin elections – a proposal that seeks to pre-empt municipalities from opening their local elections to non-citizens and comes as Republicans elevate unfounded anxieties about non-US citizens committing voter fraud in federal elections.

“We have an opportunity on Tuesday to vote ‘yes’ on an amendment to say that Wisconsin’s elections and American’s elections are for US citizens only, do you agree?” said Steil. The idea that immigrants threaten US elections has caught fire among Trump’s supporters.

Jason Tyler, a Republican activist who attended the Milwaukee rally, said he was worried about non-citizens voting illegally in the presidential election. Tyler plans to volunteer as a poll observer in Rock county on election day, where he said he will be looking for non-US citizens casting ballots. “My biggest thing I would be looking for is if somebody can’t speak English and start there,” said Tyler, who acknowledged that the bar for challenging a ballot is high enough in Wisconsin that he would not likely succeed in preventing a voter from casting a ballot.

“It’s very difficult – the only thing that I can really do is I can ask for their information, you know, find out who they are, and I can report that, if I felt that there was something weird about it,” said Tyler. “I can’t really tell that person not to vote.”

Tyler added that he’s frustrated with the idea that Trump’s inflammatory comments about immigrants are racist. “It’s ridiculous,” said Tyler, adding that his wife came to the US from the Philippines. “She loves Donald Trump.”