MILWAUKEE — Republican nominee Donald Trump spoke for 33 minutes before his first mention of the ostensible focus of his remarks.
Signs reading SCHOOL CHOICE, EDUCATION FREEDOM NOW and LET PARENTS DECIDE decorated a small auditorium, and a panel of speakers preceding the former president focused on using public funds to let families choose between public and private, especially religious, schools. Trump read from a binder containing a prepared speech on the subject, and he switched abruptly between the text and a jumble of other topics.
“We can be nice and we can be politically incorrect, but the only thing they’re going to do there is cheat on elections, and we just can’t let this happen,” he said at one point. Without warning, he continued: “The city of Milwaukee is the home of first and oldest choice program.”
He spoke of “a million Rambos.” “Turnarounds” and “gotaways” and “dead-head spending.” He mixed up Iran with North Korea and strained to pronounce United Arab Emirates. He marveled at Hurricane Helene coming so late in the storm season, which typically runs through November. He falsely claimed government agencies can’t name the U.S. population, and he compared the conflict between Israel and Iran to “two kids fighting in the schoolyard.”
Trump, 78, often speaks in a digressive, extemporaneous style that thrills his fans at large-scale rallies. But Tuesday’s event, in front of almost entirely reporters, was especially scattered and hard to follow. Polls show voters’ concerns about Trump’s age and fitness have increased since President Joe Biden, 81, withdrew and was replaced as the Democratic nominee by Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump spoke slowly and appeared tired. It was his second stop of the day, and he has picked up the pace of campaigning in recent weeks.
“I think I’m booked every single day for 33 days,” he said at the end of the news conference, incorrectly citing the number of days until the election, which is 35 days. “I’ve worked for 17 or 18 days when you say in a row, and I’m working even when I’m not working.”
Trump was more energetic during a speech to supporters in Waunakee, Wis., earlier Tuesday. He went on an extended riff about the 1987 film “Full Metal Jacket” and made up a false claim that Harris raised taxes as the San Francisco district attorney, which is not a power of that office.
Trump avoided direct questions about how he would address the escalating violence between Iran and Israel, by repeatedly insisting it never would have happened if he were president. He claimed he could settle that war, as well as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with a single phone call apiece, but he declined to specify how.
“I don’t want to say what I’d use because I don’t want to give up negotiating abilities,” he said. He even boasted that with a second term he could have struck a peace deal between Iran and Israel.
He did not mention Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate or his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) at either event until an hour and 20 minutes into the news conference when he was directly asked what advice he’d given Vance.
“Have fun,” Trump answered.
Much of what Trump said here he has said before. He repeated false claims about a U.S. government app directing cartels where to drop off smuggled migrants; in fact the app lets migrants request appointments for legal processing. He falsely accused the Biden administration of admitting 13,000 convicted murderers — a number that in fact reflects several decades of migration and includes people in federal or state custody.
He also repeatedly praised predominantly White countries such as Denmark, Norway and Sweden while emphatically warning against immigrants from Congo in Africa. And he again said migrants crossing the U.S. southern border were taking “Black and Hispanic jobs,” a characterization that many Americans found offensive and economists said was false.
“They come from, from the Congo in Africa,” Trump said at the event at Discovery World, a science and technology museum, a couple miles from where the Republican National Convention was held in July. “Many people from the Congo. I don’t know what that is.”
Trump elaborated on his proposal to eliminate the Department of Education by describing what he envisioned the agency would look like: “I think you will have like one person plus a secretary. You’ll have a secretary. The secretary will have one person plus a secretary. And all the person has to do is: Are you teaching English? Are you teaching arithmetic? What are you doing? Reading, writing and arithmetic. And are you not teaching woke? Not teaching woke is a very big factor. But we’ll have a very small staff.”
Several times Trump mixed up his words or spoke in vague terms. He praised Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban as a “tough guy” when he appeared to mean “strongman.” He complained that an interviewer with “60 Minutes” “challenged me on the computer” — meaning the interviewer argued with him in 2020 about the provenance of Hunter Biden’s laptop. He referred to Afghan attacks on coalition forces, known in NATO as “green on blue,” as “blue on brown and brown on blue.”
Asked whether as president he should have retaliated more forcefully to Iran’s missile strikes on U.S. forces in Iraq in 2020, Trump responded as he did at the time, by denying the severity of the more than 100 injuries, including traumatic brain injury. “They had a headache,” he said.
Other comments were harder to parse.
“Kamala and the radical left Democratic Party want to keep Black and Hispanic children trapped in family government,” he said.
“Every single thing that we’re doing is based on structure and common sense. I was looking at the various states, and I think 35 states could be the equivalent of Norway and Denmark.”
Overall, Trump’s speech was a far cry from the preview from former governor Tommy Thompson (R-Wis.), who introduced him at the lectern.
“It’s going to be a great day because Donald Trump is going to talk to you about his beliefs, his opportunities, his views and vision for education,” Thompson said.