Bob Collins
Dan Backhaus, a Wisconsin native, would like you to get to know his neighborhood even if you’re the type who doesn’t want to.
In a Facebook posting, Backhaus, originally from West Bend, has extended an invitation for Badger State residents to stay with him and meet his diverse neighbors in Queens.
I’d like to invite any Wisconsinite who supports Trump to come spend a free weekend with me, my girlfriend and my dog Megabite in Elmhurst, Queens.
If anyone should support Trump and fear terrorism, Muslims and refugees, it’s me. I’m a 40 year old, non-college educated white male from the reddest county in Wisconsin.
But I don’t do any of those things. In fact, for 15 years I’ve lived in New York City, working five blocks from the World Trade Center (next to a mosque!) and live in Elmhurst, Queens, where 71% of the residents are foreign born.
How did that happen? How is an uneducated, Packer loving, cheese curd eating, High Life drinking guy from West Bend who grew up listening to Mark Belling able to live like this?
If you voted for Trump please visit for a weekend to find out!
What we ask:
– That you pay for your flight, although if that is an issue I’m sure my friends will chip in to cover it. (EDIT: The response has been crazy, and I’m sure we can cover your flight)
– That 1/2 your time here is spent exploring Elmhurst and Jackson Heights, Queens with us.
– That you come into this with an open mind
– That you bring us cheese curds and/or sausage sticks. You just can’t really get them here. The kind that you buy in the airport are fine!What we will provide:
– Weekend use of our extra bedroom at no cost!
– Your meals are on us!
– A judgment-free weekend. We don’t wanna argue, we just want to introduce you to some of the immigrants Trump sees as a threat.
– If you’d like, we can guide you around doing whatever touristy things you’d like for the 1/2 of the trip not spent in Queens.
– A fridge stocked with High LifeIf you are interested in taking part in this, please email me at wiscoqueens@gmail.com and tell me a bit about yourself, what you are hoping to get out of the weekend, and which weekends work for you.
Priority booking will be given to: Mark Belling, Reince Priebus, Scott Walker, Paul Ryan, Glenn Grothman, Jim Sensenbrenner and Sean Duffy.
Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke will be denied booking. I do not want to be murdered in my own home if I accidentally look at him in a way that hurts his delicate, Cowboy-loving feelings.
As of this morning, he hasn’t received a single email, although one commenter on his Facebook page suggested it’s because he left the secret words — Spotted Cow — out of the message.
“It dawned on me over the weekend when I was at JFK at the protests, and I was wondering what I could actually do besides protest, because I can’t do this every weekend for four years,” Backhaus tells Isthmus. “I was an exchange student when I was in high school, and I thought, ‘Why don’t I do some kind of an exchange with someone from Wisconsin?’”
“I feel like I understand the rural Wisconsin Trump voter. I’m thinking about how, if I had never left West Bend, I might be really scared of immigrants or people who are different than me. You live in New York City for a while, you realize everyone’s kind of the same.”
Backhaus says if people are going to dislike each other, he’d rather see it be for good, old New York reasons like eating on the subway.
(h/t: Molly Bloom)
