Milwaukee Voters FURIOUS After RNC Doesn't Bring Any Economic Boom To City

The Republican National Committee promised the city of Milwaukee that they would see a huge boost to their local economy if they agreed to host the 2024 Republican Convention. But now that the convention is over and the dust has settled, business owners and politicians in Milwaukee are fuming about the complete lack of economic benefit the city received. On top of not getting economic activity, major parts of the city were shut down for a week which caused serious problems for residents. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what happened.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Now that the RNC has of course closed up shop, all the Republicans have left the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the dust has settled the city. The residents are furious about the fact that all of that economic prosperity that the Republican convention promised would come to the city never actually materialized. And they are off from business leaders, union leaders, all the way to the mayor of Milwaukee, who of course spoke out against Donald Trump after he publicly trashed Milwaukee. But they're all furious over the fact that the Republican National Committee, the RNC, promised them, they would see huge economic benefits. Businesses would be booming if you let us bring our convention to your city. So of course, the Democratic mayor of Milwaukee said, yes, this would be big for my city. We may not be on the same side of the political aisle, but I understand an economic opportunity when I see one.

So come on in and let's go, let's vitalize our city. Right? Well, it didn't happen. Let me read you this. According to Peter Rickman, who is the president of the Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers, he said, this has not been a net positive. I've heard from our members that work elsewhere for all the promises that have been made, very little has returned on that. He also said that the only boom that was brought by the convention was that the people working at the convention from the Service Workers Union, uh, got an additional $4 per hour over their regular pay. So that's good for them. Uh, but the local restaurants, they didn't report an increase. Local hotels didn't report an increase in activity. And of course the biggest reason for that is due to the fact that there was this increased security perimeter around the RNC, which means people couldn't get in and people didn't want to go out.

It became its own enclosed little city to where the people there for the convention didn't venture outside that bubble. Now I have actually had the privilege, uh, of going to a Democratic National Convention, just one of them, 2008, uh, with Obama. And it really is a self-contained thing. But even then, across the whole city of Denver where they were having their convention outside the perimeter, there were events right? There were bar crawls. Every hotel in the city was booked up. We ended up booking late, so we had to stay at this like roach motel type thing. It was horrible. But it was also fun 'cause it was a convention. Local businesses were rented out for meetings and

Speaking gigs and all of that. It was a huge boom to the city of Denver. So I know what conventions can be. So to hear these people in Milwaukee say that we were promised these things would happen, like we've seen in other cities over the years, and it didn't materialize. It's because Republicans didn't want it to materialize. They could have done those things. They could have held the parties at restaurants, they could have booked venues for speaking gigs, including restaurants, which happened in Denver, by the way. They just didn't do it. They made the choice to not do those things. And here's the kicker. Trump needs Wisconsin to win. He won Wisconsin in 2016 when he got the electoral college to make him president. He lost Wisconsin in 2020 when he lost the election. Wisconsin is vital for Donald Trump, and their most recent memory of him is going to be how his party promised them big things, and as per usual, failed to deliver.