Trump fills Madison Square Garden with anger, vitriol and racist threats
Marking
final stretch of campaign in New York, Trump and cabal of surrogates attack
Harris and mock Puerto Rico
Adam Gabbatt
and Ed Pilkington in New York
Mon 28 Oct
2024 01.58 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/27/trump-madison-square-garden-rally
Anger and
vitriol took center stage at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday night,
as Donald Trump and a cabal of campaign surrogates held a rally marked by
racist comments, coarse insults, and dangerous threats about immigrants.
Nine days
out from the election, Trump used the rally in New York to repeat his claim
that he is fighting “the enemy within” and again promised to launch “the
largest deportation program in American history”, amid incoherent ramblings
about ending a phone call with a “very, very important person” so he could
watch one of Elon Musk’s rockets land.
The event at
Madison Square Garden, in the center of Manhattan, had drawn comparisons to an
infamous Nazi rally held at the arena in 1939. Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ running
mate, said there was a “direct parallel” between the two events, and the
Democratic National Committee projected images on the outside of the building
on Sunday repeating claims from Trump’s former chief-of-staff that Trump had
“praised Hitler”.
There was
certainly a dark tone throughout the hours-long rally, with one speaker
describing Puerto Rico, home to 3.2m US citizens, as an “island of garbage”;
Tucker Carlson mocking Harris’ racial identity; a radio host describing Hillary
Clinton as a “sick bastard”; and a crucifix-wielding childhood friend of
Trump’s declaring that Harris is “the antichrist”.
The Puerto
Rico comments, made by Tony Hinchliffe, a podcaster with a history of racist
remarks, were immediately criticized by the Harris-Walz campaign. Ricky Martin,
the Puerto Rican popstar who has more than 18m followers on Instagram, wrote in
a post: “This is what they think of us. Vote for @kamalaharris.”
Trump
campaign spokesperson Danielle Alvarez in a statement said “this joke does not
reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”
But that
could prove problematic in Pennsylvania, where the majority of the swing
state’s 580,000 eligible Latino voters are of Puerto Rican descent. Both
campaigns have been trying to appeal to Latino voters in the final weeks of the
campaign, and Harris had visited a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia
earlier on Sunday, where she outlined plans to introduce an “economic
opportunity taskforce” for Puerto Rico.
The
pugnacious mood didn’t change once Trump began speaking, as the former
president quickly repeated his pledge to “launch the largest deportation
program in American history”.
Trump
continued his frequent rants about immigration and claimed that a “savage
Venezuelan prison gang” had “taken over Times Square”, which will come as a
surprise to anyone who has recently visited the New York landmark. The former
president also stated, wrongly, that the Biden administration did not have
money to respond to a recent hurricane in North Carolina because “they spent
all of their money bringing in illegal immigrants, flying them in by beautiful
jet planes”.
Trump’s
usual dystopian threats were on offer, as the 78-year-old expanded on his
claims about “the enemy within” – a group of political opponents that he has
said he will set the military on if elected.
“We’re just
not running against Kamala. I think a lot of our politicians here tonight know
this. She means nothing, she’s purely a vessel that’s all she is,” Trump said.
“We’re
running against something far bigger than Joe or Kamala and far more powerful
than them, which is a massive, vicious radical-left machine that runs today’s
Democrat party. They’re just vessels.”
Trump’s
appearance at Madison Square Garden – home to the New York Knicks and Rangers,
and venue for countless legendary acts including Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson
and John Lennon’s last concert appearance before his murder – marks the
culmination of his peculiar love-hate flirtation with his native city. Despite
the fact that he has no chance of winning New York state – Harris is 15 points
ahead in the Five Thirty Eight tracker poll – this was his third rally here
this year.
In May he
made an audacious attempt to woo Black and Latino voters in the south Bronx,
just a few miles from his childhood home in Queens. Then in September, he
pitched up in the New York City suburbs in Long Island.
What Trump
intends by staging this trilogy of seemingly pointless electoral appearances is
unclear. He has used his rambling speeches to take a nostalgic walk down memory
lane to what he sees as the golden days of his life as a New York real estate
magnate.
But he has
also portrayed New York City in the most dark and dystopian terms, as a
rat-infested haven for drug addicts, gangs and “illegal aliens” housed in
luxury apartments while military veterans shiver on the sidewalks. His toxic
language is perhaps a reflection of his bitterness towards the city of his
birth, which in separate court cases has convicted him of 34 felonies, found
his company the Trump Organization guilty of criminal tax fraud, and found him
personally liable for sexual abuse.
On Sunday
Trump again criticized his home town, claiming that the Biden administration
had forced “hundreds of thousands of really rough people” into the city and
telling New Yorkers, despite police saying crime has declined: “Your crime is
through the roof. Everything is through the roof.”
The
pugnacious tone had been set earlier in the afternoon, when several of the
opening speakers made obscenity-laced and hate-filled remarks.
Hinchcliffe’s
comments about Puerto Rico – he also made lewd sexual innuendos about Latina
women – were met with big laughs from the crowd. A comment from radio
personality Sid Rosenberg that Hillary Clinton is a “sick bastard” was
similarly well received, as was Rosenberg’s claim that “the fucking illegals
get everything they want”.
David Rem, a
Republican politician who the Trump campaign described as a childhood friend of
the former president, called Harris “the devil” and “the antichrist”, to loud
cheers. Rem later took a crucifix out of his pocket and announced that he was
running for New York City mayor.
As soon as
Trump announced his intention to stage a rally at Madison Square Garden just
days before the election, critics leapt to point out historical parallels with
one of the most notorious events in New York history. On 20 February 1939, just
seven months before Germany invaded Poland, the pro-Hitler German American Bund
held a mass Nazi rally in the exact same arena.
The
organizers chose George Washington’s birthday as the date to parade their
vision of an Aryan Christian country dedicated to white supremacy and American
patriotism. They erected a giant portrait of Washington, which they flanked
with swastika flags alongside the stars and stripes.
More than
20,000 American Nazi sympathisers attended, many dressed in storm trooper
uniforms and giving the Sieg Heil salute. The “Führer” of the American Bund,
Fritz Kuhn, told the crowd that America would be “returned to the people who
founded it”, and decried the “Jewish controlled press”.
Hillary
Clinton had noted the similarities between the two events in an interview with
CNN last week, and at a rally in Nevada earlier on Sunday, Walz was happy to
continue the comparison.
“Donald
Trump’s got this big rally going at Madison Square Garden,” Walz said.
“There’s a
direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the mid-1930s at Madison Square
Garden. And don’t think that he doesn’t know for one second exactly what
they’re doing there.”
The Trump
campaign reacted furiously to the accusations, describing Clinton’s comments as
“disgusting”. One of the few people to reference the 1939 rally on Sunday was
Hulk Hogan, who emerged to wrestling music, spent several seconds struggling to
rip off his shirt, then claimed: “I don’t see no stinkin’ Nazis in here”.
After a night of fire and fury, it will be up to the American voters to decide
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