The Mayor of Milwaukee Wants to Show Trump What the City Is Made Of

You can almost detect some pity in Milwaukee mayor Cavalier Johnson’s voice when he talks about the state of the GOP under Donald Trump. “It’s hard to be the party of moral clarity,” the Democrat told me by phone, “when your nominee is paying off porn stars.”

It was late June—not long after Trump reportedly described Milwaukee as “horrible” in a closed-door meeting with those wayward congressional Republicans; just days before a pivotal debate; and a few short weeks before the GOP would descend on that very city to nominate Trump for a third straight presidential cycle. I wanted to get Johnson’s thoughts on Trump’s comment (and his clumsy subsequent attempts to save face with residents of that swing state’s most populous city). But I also wanted to know how the 37-year-old Democrat—Milwaukee’s first Black elected mayor, whose political star has risen with a dominant reelection victory this spring—felt about playing host to a party that has only become more debased, dangerous, and antidemocratic since Trump was bested by Joe Biden in 2020.

Unsurprisingly, Johnson disagreed with the former president’s assessment of his “marvelous” city: “Obviously, he was wrong,” Johnson said. Nevertheless, he’s excited to showcase his hometown on the national stage—as well as the stark contrasts between the party of Trump and the one that will convene less than a hundred miles south later this summer. Trump is “thinking only about himself and not the American people,” Johnson said. “In Chicago, at the [Democratic National Convention], [voters will] see that Joe Biden has been working hard to move the ball forward for your average American.”

In a conversation with Vanity Fair, which has been lightly edited for clarity and length, Johnson sounded off on Trump’s “bizarre” remark, the GOP’s identity crisis, and his advice for Biden as he seeks to replicate the 2020 win in Wisconsin that paved his way to the White House: “Get out and tell the positive story of the administration.”

Vanity Fair: I know you’ve already talked about this, but I do want to start by asking you again about Trump’s comment on your city, along with reports that he had planned to stay in Chicago—a city he has also derided, though he also has a building with his name on it here. How did you react to that and his subsequent denials of having said that the city was “horrible”?

Cavalier Johnson: I have to look back, but the past couple of weeks even, he’s said Milwaukee’s a horrible city; Detroit is not the greatest city; Philadelphia is not a great place—there are certain things, I think, that all these places have in common. So you have to look at those. But as it relates to Milwaukee specifically—you know, it was really interesting. When I was hearing reports out of Washington, DC, that Republicans are coming to Donald Trump’s aid, it was that, He was talking about crime. No, he was talking about election integrity. No, he actually didn’t say it at all. They were kind of twisting themselves into pretzels. But obviously, he was wrong. He was wrong about Philadelphia and Detroit and other places.

Milwaukee is an outstanding, fantastic, splendid, terrific, marvelous city [in which] I am fortunate enough to wake up every single day as mayor and have the opportunity to serve and lead. And when you go into the neighborhoods across the city, they’re diverse, vibrant—they’re filled with people who care about the city. And I thought, too, that it wasn’t a very smart political strategy, because there are tens of thousands of Republicans living in the city of Milwaukee, who call this place home, raised their kids and grandkids here, and are integral parts of our community—and you call their home horrible? And for a man who is trying to make inroads with people of color—this is the most diverse place in the state of Wisconsin, with the most Black people in the state who live within the city limits, and you call their home horrible too? It’s just kind of bizarre.

Trump hasn’t only denigrated Milwaukee; in the 2020 cycle, it was one of the main targets of his efforts to overturn his loss to Joe Biden. Given his attempts to throw out the votes of hundreds of thousands in your city, what does it feel like to be rolling out the welcome mat for him four years later?

I think two things about that. Well, more than two things, but I’ll just stick to these two. One is that, yes, Milwaukee was integral to his claims of election fraud and trying to say that President Joe Biden didn’t really win the election. Of course he did. And of course we held an election here that was free, and that was fair, and that was transparent. As a matter of fact, I was the city council president at the time. And I went to our central count location and I took a shift, just like so many other people did. I tell ya, I treated every single ballot from every single voter in this city the exact same way. I treated the folks’ ballots who voted for President Biden in the exact same fashion that I treated those ballots [of] people [who] voted for President Trump at the time, so there was no impropriety here. The other thing that I think is interesting about that is the fact that today, Donald Trump is the biggest cheerleader for the Republican plans to do exactly the same thing—to mail in the votes. So, on one hand, they called this “ballot harvesting” and “cheating” and all this and all that, and now today he’s saying, you know, Bank your vote if you’re a Republican. It’s just kind of interesting how the tide has changed as they try to adapt to new ways of voting that Democrats already were using.

As it relates to welcoming the RNC here, I think I’m of two minds. One, there’s a business case for this. Like, I want Milwaukee to have greater exposure across the country and across the world, and the RNC represents an opportunity for that to happen—to have a four-day global commercial about our city. Because I want more political, business, sports, and entertainment events to happen in Milwaukee. I want more people to locate jobs or to vacation here, to move here. And the RNC presents an opportunity for that to happen. On the other hand, though, just because we’re welcoming to the people who come here doesn’t mean we have to agree with their politics—and certainly not Donald Trump’s politics or the Republican Party’s politics. I certainly don’t.

Let’s talk about the Republican Party for a minute here. I mean, they’ve of course rallied around him, now the third election cycle in a row, in spite of everything. What does that say about them right now? What’s your view on the state of the party that’s going to be coming into your city in just a few weeks?

I think that the Republican Party has lost its identity under Donald Trump. I think they’re trying to find out who they are. I think that they have the capacity to get back to what the party once was, when Mitt Romney and George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush and John McCain were the standard-bearers. Right now, they seem to be falling in line with what Donald Trump has formed the party to be. It used to be that they proposed to be the party of moral clarity. Well, it’s hard to be the party of moral clarity when your nominee is paying off porn stars and is caught on tape saying things that I assume none of these Republicans would want to happen to their daughter or granddaughter. It’s hard to be the party of law and order when your presumptive nominee is a…convicted felon. It’s hard to be the party of small government when your nominee has laid the foundation for courts to go in and stop people from making decisions and women from having access to reproductive health care. So I think the party has some soul-searching to do—and after November, when President Biden is reelected, as I believe he will be, I would imagine that the party has the opportunity at that point to pick up the pieces and finally move past this aberration.

Wisconsin is always a bellwether. It’s sure to play an outsize role in the outcome of this year’s election, as it did in the last cycle and one before that. Last time around, Biden won it by a little bit more than 20,000 votes, and polls show another close race again. What do you think the president needs to do to win the state again this time? What would your advice be for the campaign, as someone who’s proven popular in the city and influential within the state?

I think that the president has to do what he’s been doing—and do more of it. And that is to get out and tell the positive story of the administration. There are a number of wonderful things that are impacting people in Milwaukee and across each and every single day, and I think that many people have not connected the dots that those things have happened because of Joe Biden. I think Joe Biden is a man who puts his head down and just does the job to serve the American people. But, you know, he’s in elected office, and he’s campaigning, and he himself has got to continue to get out and tell the story and say, Hey, this is possible because of the direction of my administration. That’s why senior citizens in Wisconsin who need insulin have that capped at $35 a month if you’re in a rural part of the state, let’s just say. That’s why a young person of color who lives in Milwaukee is the first person in their family to go to college, and they’re going to a HBCU—look, the most money ever presented to HBCUs happened under President Joe Biden’s watch. And students, by the way, have the opportunity to have their college debt eliminated. That’s why we’ll see access to good-paying, family-supporting jobs—particularly in manufacturing in a state like Wisconsin. We’ll see more opportunity that way, because Joe Biden is growing this economy: over 15 million jobs, including hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs across the country. They need to get up, get out, and continue to tell that positive story across the city, across the state, and across the country.

The GOP’s rationale for coming to Milwaukee is obvious: It’s seeking to make inroads in a key swing state, one that’s part of the Democrats’ blue wall. What do you hope the city of Milwaukee gets out of this?

My hope is that the city is seen on a national and a global scale. And I believe that it will be with not just the delegation, but the media from around the world that will descend upon Milwaukee and pump images of this city and the positive experiences that people have into living rooms and C-suites across this entire country and around the world. I want for this to open up the door to creating a positive economic cycle in Milwaukee where, after this event is over, we’re in contention then to host other large-scale political, business, sports, and entertainment events—because I want the DNC to come back to Milwaukee at some point in the future. I want businesses to locate to Milwaukee, to create good-paying, family-supporting jobs here, for people to continue to visit Milwaukee and continue to support our hospitality and tourism industry that we have here. I think there’s a lot of upside to hosting the convention for our future economy in this city.

We are going to have quite a split screen here in the Midwest this summer, with the RNC in Milwaukee and the DNC the following month in Chicago. What do you expect voters to see in that juxtaposition? And what do you hope they take away from it?

I think that folks will see that Donald Trump is the nominee on the Republican side, who’s thinking only about himself and not the American people. And then on the other side, in Chicago, at the DNC, they’ll see that Joe Biden has been working hard to move the ball forward for your average American—and in the second term will continue to do that with the positive momentum that his administration has already built.