Donald Trump showed up at a Wisconsin rally on Wednesday still wearing an orange-and-yellow safety vest he put on to sit in a garbage truck and highlight President Joe Biden’s derogatory remark about the former president’s supporters being “garbage.”
Trump took the stage in Green Bay and explained, while on his plane and headed to the city, a staffer approached him with a question.
“‘Sir, you know, the word garbage is the hottest thing right now out there – the hottest thing,'” Trump said, drawing laughter from the crowd. “‘Sir, would like to drive a garbage truck?’
“I said, ‘Sorta cool, though, isn’t it? … I think that’s OK, but I don’t feel comfortable not wearing a suit.'”
The plane landed and a garbage truck displaying a Trump campaign sign pulled up on the tarmac. The former president noticed that the step to get in the passenger side of the truck was relatively high.
“The driver looked like Cary Grant in his prime,” Trump told the crowd. “I said, ‘If I don’t get up there, this is going to be very embarrassing. These stupid people [mainstream media members] will say, ‘He’s cognitively and physically impaired.'”
After easily getting in the truck and answering a few questions, Trump headed to the rally, fully intending to put on his suit jacket. His staffers suggested otherwise.
“They said, ‘It would be unbelievable if you could wear it in stage,'” the former president told the crowd, which roared in applause. “I said, ‘No way!'”
Trump then was told the vest made him appear thinner.
“They got me,” he said. “I said, ‘I want to wear it on stage.’ I may never wear a blue jacket again.”
In a video call organized buy advocacy group Voto Latino on Tuesday, Biden said, “Donald Trump has no character. He doesn’t give a damn about the Latino community. Just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”
In Green Bay, Trump rallied alongside NFL star Brett Favre in the critical battleground state with just six days until the election. In a sign of the importance of the state, Trump’s Democrat opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, was campaigning simultaneously in overwhelmingly blue-voting Madison, roughly a 2½-hour drive away.
Favre, who won three NFL Most Valuable Player awards and a Super Bowl for Green Bay in the 1990s, praised Trump before the former president arrived, telling the crowd, “Much like the Packer organization, Donald Trump and his organization was a winner.”
“The United States of America won with his leadership,” Favre said.
In relying on Favre, Trump is tapping into the state’s deep and loyal support for the Packers and the team’s onetime star quarterback.
