Trump filled Madison Square Garden with anger, chaos and racist threats. US Election 2024

Anger and chaos took center stage in New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday night, as Donald Trump and a cabal of the campaign led a rally with racist comments, crude insults and threatening threats about immigrants.

Nine days after the election, Trump used a rally in New York to reiterate his claim that he was fighting an “enemy within” and to once again launch “the largest deportation program in American history.” Promised, amid conflicted rants about ending a phone call. With a “very important person” to watch one of Elon Musk’s rockets land.

The event at Madison Square Garden in midtown Manhattan drew comparisons to an infamous Nazi rally held on the square in 1939. Kamala Harris’ running mate Tim Walls said there was a “direct parallel” between the two incidents, and the Democratic National Committee posted photos outside the building on Sunday that echoed Trump’s former chief of staff’s claims that Trump had “Hitler’s praise”.

The hours-long rally certainly had a dark tone, with one speaker describing Puerto Rico, home to 3.2 million American citizens, as an “island of garbage.” Tucker Carlson made fun of Harris’ racial identity. A radio host describes Hillary Clinton as a “sick bastard.” And a childhood friend of Trump’s crucifix who called Harris “the antichrist.”

The Puerto Rico comments, made by Tony Hinchliffe, a podcaster with a history of racist comments, were immediately criticized by the Harris-Wallace campaign. Ricky Martin, the Puerto Rican pop star with more than 18 million followers on Instagram, wrote in a post: “That’s what they think of us. Vote for @kamalaharris.

“This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign,” Trump campaign spokesman Daniel Alvarez said in a statement.

Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe makes racist Puerto Rico comments at Trump rally – video

But that could prove difficult in Pennsylvania, where the majority of the swing state’s 580,000 eligible Latino voters are of Puerto Rican descent. Both campaigns are trying to appeal to Latino voters in the final weeks of the campaign, and Harris visited a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia earlier Sunday, where he launched an “economic opportunity task force” for Puerto Rico. Plans for introduction were outlined.

The funny mood didn’t change when Trump began to speak, as the former president quickly repeated his pledge to “begin the largest deportation program in American history.”

Trump continued his relentless criticism of immigration and claimed that a “brutal Venezuelan prison gang” had “taken over Times Square,” which will come as a shock to anyone who has recently visited New York’s historic Will visit the location. The former president also falsely said the Biden administration didn’t have the money to respond to the recent hurricane in North Carolina because “they spent all their money bringing in illegal immigrants, flying them in fancy jets.” Spent in flying”.

Trump supporters at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Photo: Greg Cohen/The Guardian

Trump’s usual dystopian threats were on display, as the 78-year-old ramped up his claims about the “enemy within” – a group of political opponents he has said he would kill if elected. The army will advance.

“We’re not just running against Kamala. I think a lot of our politicians here tonight know that. It doesn’t make any sense, she’s just a vessel, that’s all,” Trump said.

“We’re running against something much bigger and much more powerful than Joe or Kamala, which is the huge, evil radical left machine that runs today’s Democrat Party. They’re just vessels.”

Trump’s appearance at Madison Square Garden — home of the New York Knicks and Rangers, and the site of countless legendary acts including Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and John Lennon’s final concert appearance before his assassination — was accompanied by his strangeness. Love and hate is the end of the flirtation. Hometown Despite the fact that he has no chance of winning New York state – Harris leads by 15 points in the FiveThirtyEight Tracker poll – this was his third rally here this year.

Elon Musk reacts on stage at Madison Square Garden as Howard Litnick listens. Photo: Andrew Kelly/Reuters

In May he made a bold 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 moved to Long Island, a suburb of New York City.

It is not clear what Trump intends by orchestrating this trinity of seemingly pointless campaign displays. He uses his rambunctious speeches to take a nostalgic trip down memory lane to what he sees as the golden days of his life as a New York real estate magnate.

But he also portrays New York City in very dark and dystopian terms, as a rat-infested haven for drug addicts, gangs and “illegal aliens” housed in luxury apartments while military ex- Soldiers shiver on the sidewalks. His vitriol may reflect his bitterness toward the city of his birth, which in separate court cases convicted him of 34 felonies, found his company, the Trump Organization, guilty of criminal tax fraud, and He was found personally responsible for the sexual assault.

On Sunday, Trump again criticized his hometown, claiming that the Biden administration had forced “hundreds of thousands of really bad people” into the city and told New Yorkers that despite what police say is crime. has come down to: “Your offense is through the roof. Everything is through the roof.”

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The derisive tone was set earlier in the afternoon, when several early speakers made obscene and hateful comments.

Hinchcliffe’s comments about Puerto Rico — he also made lewd sexual innuendos about Latina women — drew loud laughs from the crowd. A comment by radio personality Sid Rosenberg that Hillary Clinton was a “sick bastard” was well received, as was Rosenberg’s claim that “illegals get everything they want”.

David Reim, a Republican politician described by the Trump campaign as a childhood friend of the former president, called Harris “the devil” and the “antichrist,” shouting slogans. Rem later pulls a crucifix from his pocket and announces that he is running for mayor of New York City.

A supporter holds a Trump flag in Madison Square Garden. Photo: Greg Cohen/The Guardian

As Trump announced his intention to hold a rally in Madison Square Garden days before the election, critics jumped to point out the historical parallels to one of the most infamous events in New York history. On February 20, 1939, just seven months before Germany invaded Poland, the pro-Hitler German American Bund held a large anti-Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden.

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 created a large portrait of Washington, which they draped over the stars and stripes with swastika flags.

More than 20,000 American Nazi sympathizers attended, many dressed in storm trooper uniforms and giving the Sighell salute. The “Führer” of the American Bund, Fritz Kuhn, told the crowd that America would be “returned to the people who founded it”, and denounced the “Jewish controlled press”.

Hillary Clinton noted the similarities between the two events in an interview with CNN last week, and earlier at a rally in Nevada on Sunday, Walls was happy to continue the comparison.

“Donald Trump held this big rally at Madison Square Garden,” Walls said.

There is a direct parallel to a large rally in Madison Square Garden in the mid-1930s. And don’t think for a second that he doesn’t know what they’re doing there.

The Trump campaign reacted strongly to the allegations, calling Clinton’s comments “disgusting.” One of the few people to reference the 1939 rally on Sunday was Hulk Hogan, who emerged to wrestling music, ripped off his shirt and struggled for several seconds, then claimed: “I don’t see no stinkin’ Nazis here.” .

After a night of fire and fury, it will be up to the American voters to decide.

This article was amended on October 28, 2024 because an earlier version stated that Donald Trump’s rally was held in the same arena as the 1939 pro-Hitler German-American Bund Nazi rally. Although the two rally locations have the same name, the 1939 rally was at a different location. The current stadium opened in 1968 and is the fourth stadium to be named Madison Square Garden, replacing the third that opened in 1925.

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