Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event Saturday, June 15, 2024 in Detroit. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

Former President Donald Trump will stay in Milwaukee during the Republican National Convention, despite initial reports that he would stay at Trump International Hotel in Chicago.

Trump’s campaign denied that he was planning to be some 90 miles away from the convention. Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s press secretary, confirmed that “the president is planning to stay in Milwaukee for the Convention.” Such speculation circled the embattled nominee, who was alleged to have called Milwaukee “horrible” city in a closed-door meeting with Republican officials. 

Steven Cheung, one of the Trump campaign’s spokesmen, doubled down on Trump’s commitment to staying in Milwaukee but maintained that the former president had expressed concerns “how terrible crime and voter fraud are.” 

At a rally in Racine, Wis. today, Trump tried to remedy the situation by telling a crowd “I love Milwaukee.”

“The initial decision for Mr. Trump to overnight at the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago was made partly because of his own preference and partly because of security and logistics concerns,” an anonymous source told The New York Times. 

Trump had also made disparaging comments about Chicago in the past. As president, he had called the violence in the city “worse than Afghanistan” and “embarrassing to us as a nation.”