Racist comedian’s Trump rally appearance blamed on Wisconsin GOP operative

Ripon native Alex Bruesewitz, who forced Mike Gallagher out of Congress and recruited Tony Wied to run, has also said his hometown is the birthplace of the “old” Republican Party—the new party was born in Trump Tower.

Alex Bruesewitz, the Trump-supporting political consultant instrumental in pushing 8th District Congressman Mike Gallagher out of office earlier this year, is reportedly the one who booked a comedian whose racist comments at a Madison Square Garden rally put the former president’s campaign on the ropes in the final run-up to Election Day.

It was Bruesewitz who first hinted he would challenge Gallagher in a primary before setting up former gas station chain owner Tony Wied to run—complete with an endorsement from former President Donald Trump even before Wied officially announced his campaign.

An article published Saturday by The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta, “Inside the Ruthless, Restless Final Days of Trump’s Campaign,” reviews numerous allegations and examples of in-fighting and unauthorized actions among staff—culminating in the moment when “standing in the bowels of Madison Square Garden on October 27, an irate group of Trump staffers, family members, and loyalists were looking for someone to blame,” Alberta writes, after “shock comedian” Tony Heathcliffe told jokes about Black people carving watermelons for Halloween, “portrayed Jews as money-hungry and Arabs as primitive.” 

Then came the joke that may have halted the course of the Trump campaign’s apparent momentum.

““I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” deadpanned Healthcliffe, who had once been dropped by his talent agency for telling a racist joke.

Alberta describes the chaos that accompanied the instantaneous blowback, not only from Democrats but fellow Republicans who immediately recognized the public relations disaster since nearly 1 million Puerto Ricans live in swing states, including an estimated 65,000 in Wisconsin. (While the territory’s 3 million residents cannot vote in presidential elections while living on the island, they are American citizens and can vote if they relocate to one of the 50 states.)

The story describes how Trump senior staff “were racing to catch up with the damage—and rewinding the clock to figure out how Hinchcliffe had ended up onstage in the first place.

“It didn’t take long to get to the answer,” Alberta writes. “Alex Bruesewitz.”

According to Alberta’s reporting, Bruesewitz had been trying to book Trump on Heathcliffe’s podcast and recommended him to Trump’s head of planning and production for the Madison Square Garden rally.

Who is Alex Bruesewitz?

Bruesewitz is described by Alberta as “a mid-level staffer—formally a liaison to right-wing media, informally a terminally online troll and perpetual devil on the campaign’s shoulder” whose role in the campaign had grown as Trump grew tired of message discipline, feeling bored and babysat.

Nine months earlier, Bruesewitz was a relatively unknown consultant until the Wisconsin native blasted Gallagher for voting against impeaching President Biden’s Homeland Security secretary. Days later, facing constituent demands for a primary challenger, Gallagher announced he was retiring, then later abruptly announced he was resigning. Bruesewitz made noises about organizing a campaign with Trump’s support, refusing to support a state senator and a former state senator contemplating getting in the race.

A 1995 Ripon High School graduate, Bruesewitz organized a protest march in Washington, DC shortly after Trump lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.

“CNN sucks. Fox News sucks,” Bruesewitz chanted to the crowd before falsely telling them the election had been stolen from Trump “in the dead of night while everybody’s sleeping” and that it was “the greatest scandal in the history of our nation.”

At a 2022 Trump rally in Waukesha, Bruesewitz claimed his hometown was no longer the birthplace of the Republican Party, but the “old” Republican Party.

“The new Republican Party was born in June of 2015 at Trump Tower in New York City.”

Lashing out at Republican leaders like former Congressman Paul Ryan, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, and former President George W. Bush for what he felt was inadequate support of Trump, Bruesewitz said, “Vote the RINOs the hell out of office. The new generation of pro-Trump, America-first fighters will fight for you each and every day because President Trump taught them how to fight and how to win.”

“And we’re not going back.”

Ironically, two years later, crowds supporting Vice President Kamala Harris chant those same words—about not going back to Trump or the racism espoused by Bruesewitz’s idea of entertainment.