Former Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, who was pushed out of the Trump administration’s Chief of Staff position after six months, has been raising big money for the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin next month, where recently convicted felon and former President Donald Trump will presumably be named the 2024 GOP presidential nominee.
[Note: Priebus was replaced by Homeland Security Secretary and Marine Corps General John Kelly, who has since become a top critic of Trump and has called the presumptive GOP nominee “unfit” for the job. Kelly will not be at the convention.]
The Wall Street Journal reported in April that Priebus, a former Wisconsin GOP chair, is currently “deploying his diplomatic skills” as chairman of the 2024 Republican National Convention host committee, and is working—”at least indirectly”—for Trump.
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As chairman of the host committee, Priebus will need to have his diplomatic skills running at full tilt as he hosts the potential 50,000 attendees, a number of whom are expected to bring guns to the event — Wisconsin allows open carry of guns, and concealed carry with a permit, both of which will be permitted in the security footprint of the RNC Convention.
(The firearms will be permitted in the “soft” security footprint of the convention; a “hard” security footprint, where the weapons will be prohibited, is a smaller area that will be defined nearer in time to the event.)
Milwaukee Alderman Robert Bauman sought a gun ban for the convention at downtown’s Fiserv Arena following “revelations that a proposed ordinance would allow most firearms but prohibit typically innocuous items in the RNC security footprint, where the public and demonstrators will be able to come and go,” according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Bauman said that “adding guns to the mix is almost ludicrous when tennis balls are prohibited.” (Other banned items are common potential projectiles like slingshots, glass bottles, metal bottles, and canned food as well as coolers, sleeping bags, gas cans etc., a list that tracks with lists of banned items at other conventions.)
Alderman Scott Spiker, who voted to reject the ban, said Bauman’s proposed measure would violate state law and that passing a ban could end up encouraging people to come to the convention armed — as a show of defiance.
Spiker said: “It’s going to be cold comfort if we invite in people who are looking for a fight and something bad happens.”