As hundreds of thousands of New York City voters headed to the polls early to cast their ballots this weekend, tens of thousands of Trump supporters descended on Midtown Manhattan for a presidential rally Sunday afternoon.
Supporters in red MAGA hats waving Trump and American flags started lining up outside Madison Square Garden early morning, hoping for a glimpse of the former president ahead of speeches from Elon Musk, Ohio Senator and vice presidential candidate JD Vance and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
While the mood inside was festive, the tone was often grim, with one man sitting by a reporter shouting “slut!” when Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ name was mentioned. The night culminated in Trump himself talking in circles in a lengthy speech about America as a defeated and occupied country that only he could save.
More than an hour into his remarks, Trump started talking about how “we want to thank Eric Adams” for the Democratic mayor’s on Saturday dismissal of the idea — leveled by Trump’s former chief of staff — that was was a fascist.
A few minutes later, though, Trump had moved on to a brief rant about how bad things supposedly are in New York City, where “Your crime is through the roof.”.
Trump’s decision to rally in his hometown, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans six to one, seemed like an unlikely destination for a GOP nominee and now Florida resident nine days before a close election. But Trump said at the rally that he hoped to win the state, and New Yorkers in the crowd said they were glad he’d returned to his old Manhattan stomping grounds.
“I think it’s all troll. And I love trolls,” said Victor Almonte, 45, from University Heights in The Bronx. He said he supported Trump because he was released a year early from federal prison thanks to the First Step Act, which passed while Trump was president with overwhelming bipartisan support.
“I’m against the trans movement, like grooming the kids. I’m against the illegal immigration that’s going on right now,” he said, adding that his parents were immigrants from the Dominican Republic who had come “the right way.”
A group of young men in their 20s from Philadelphia lamented that their mothers would be voting for Harris.
“I think she’s really going to lose her mind” when Trump wins the election, one said.
“My mom, too,” another added.
“Women in that demographic just don’t really know better,” a third chimed in.
“I’m a first-time voter, and I’m voting for Trump to make America great again,” his friend yelled, eliciting cheers.
“There’s only two genders and I don’t want tampons in the boys bathroom,” he continued, as the crowd around him cheered loudly.
‘Thinking for Themselves’
As the lineup of speakers stretched on into the night, they made Trump’s closing argument to a joyous crowd that brought a concert energy into the venue where former Fox News host Tucker Carlson reminisced about seeing the Grateful Dead decades earlier.
The comparison of the rally to the 1939 Nazi event in the old Madison Square Garden drew laughs at several points, as the crowd responded to Harris’ name at numerous points with chants of “hawk tuah,” referencing a sexually charged internet meme.
Wrestler Hulk Hogan declared that he didn’t see any Nazis, but only hard-working Americans. TV host Dr. Phil said that Trump wasn’t a bully, because he was speaking truths and “we want people to think for themselves.”
As the warm-up acts went on, former White House advisor Stephen Miller said “America is for Americans and Americans only.” Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico, an American territory, a “floating island of garbage” and that Latinos “love making babies… They come inside, just like they did to our country.”
Each new speaker brought louder cheers and renewed chants of USA. “You think this could have happened 4 or 8 years ago?” Donald Trump Jr. asked the crowd. “The king of New York is back to reclaim the city that he built.”
Trump himself took the stage after nearly two and a half hours promising to “terminate the Green New Scam,” “drill baby drill,” to lower taxes on corporations, and “ban all sanctuary cities.”
He thanked the arena’s owner, James Dolan, when he took the stage. Dolan has been an important supporter of both Adams and Trump, who mocked the charges against Adams on Sunday, saying “We want to thank Eric Adams, going through a hard time with these people,” meaning the federal prosecutors who have charged the mayor with five counts including wire fraud and bribery.
“These are lunatics, these people. They’ve weaponized the Justice Department,” Trump said, amplifying Adams’ earlier suggestions that he was being charged as punishment for criticizing the Biden administration’s immigration policies.
Speaking in loose and apocalyptic terms, he said the United States is “now an occupied country,” and said his coming win would be “liberation day in America.”
Trump vowed if he’s elected that “the migrant invasion of our country ends and the restoration of our county begins,” adding “They’ve even taken over Times Square.”
As his remarks neared a closed, Trump spoke to why he’d returned to his hometown:
“It would be such an honor to win New York. Hasn’t been done in decades, hasn’t been done in so long,” Trump said. “They all say, ‘Sir you’re wasting your money.’ I don’t think so. Your crime is through the roof. Your everything is through the roof.”
As Trump’s remarks stretched on and the rally hit its fourth hour, with him exaggerating how many people were watching him speak outside of the arena and insisting his win was all but inevitable, some attendees were seen exiting the arena as many others stayed and cheered.
‘Everything Is Great’
In the days ahead of Trump’s rally, his longest serving chief of staff, John Kelly, a retired U.S. Marine Corps general, publicly warned that Trump fit the definition of a fascist.
Asked at a security briefing held by the NYPD ahead of the Trump rally on Saturday, Adams, a Democrat, said that he disagreed with that messaging which has been amplified by the Harris campaign.
“The level of conversation, I think we could all dial down the temperature,” Adams said. “I don’t think that it’s fitting [for] anyone to state that the former president is equal to being Hitler.”
Kelly told The Atlantic magazine that Trump once said in a private conversation that, “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.” The Trump campaign denies the then-president made those remarks.
While a group of protesters with Democratic Socialists of America convened at Bryant Park and another group gathered on the steps of Moynihan Station, around the corner from the Garden, Midtown was full of Trump supporters, along with a significant police presence.
“Everything is great,” an exultant Chief of Patrol John Chell said in an interview during the rally from inside the arena with far-right network Newsmax. “We got 19,000 in the arena, we got 5,000 outside. Great atmosphere, everyone’s peaceful. We haven’t had one incident. No protesters. It’s a very energetic day.”
He added: “That’s the message we were sending. Not today.”
‘Really Deeply Afraid’
A record 140,145 New York City voters cast ballots on Saturday, the first day of early voting, with another 117715 doing so on Sunday, according to the Board of Elections’ unofficial tally
Just a few blocks away at an early voting site in Chelsea, a neighborhood where more than 80% of voters supported Biden over Trump in 2020, many New Yorkers expressed immense unease about the future of the country.
“I’m really deeply afraid,” said a 60-year-old Harris voter named Laurence, who declined to provide his last name. “I’m terrified that if Trump is elected, that this is basically the end of democracy in America and I haven’t been this scared in a really long time.”
Alex Cobus, an adjunct professor at NYU, said she came out to vote for Harris for similar reasons. “Oh my God, the fate of our democracy, the least sexy sort of topic,” Cobus said. ”But I think definitely it’s the most important one.”
