In the final week of his campaign, former President Donald Trump will cross one item off his campaign list on Sunday: a rally at the iconic Madison Square Garden. This Broadway enthusiast will offer a matinee performance, featuring musical guests and a host of Republican allies.
It’s a moment Trump has long said he wanted to live in the state where he built a business empire and later faced criminal and civil trials, becoming a convicted felon.
Trump says he wants to “make New York great again”
“I think it will be a great time, and it will really be a celebration of all of this, you know, because it will end a few days later. The campaign, I won’t campaign anymore. Then I will campaign to make America big,” Trump said of the upcoming rally at Madison Square Garden during a local radio interview with Cats. & Cosby Thursday.
The day before the much-anticipated rally, Trump called a “tele-rally” hosted by the New York Republican Party, portraying New York City as a city in decline and making another long-shot bid to capture the Democratic stronghold .
Trump denounced the influx of migrants into New York and highlighted the crime rate, while lamenting that “rich people” are leaving the city.
“We’re going to have to do things to incentivize New Yorkers to stay. I mean, they’re leaving New York. … And the rich are leaving — the people’s wealth is leaving. And that means taxes of hundreds of millions and million dollars, and we can’t let that happen,” Trump said.
The former president has blamed Democratic politicians for what he calls the city’s decline. However, while complaining about the homeless population and empty stores on Madison Avenue and Fifth Avenue, Trump said he would work with Democrats to “turn this around” and make “New York great again.”
In this May 23, 2024, file photo, former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during his campaign rally in Crotona Park in the South Bronx, New York.
James Devaney/GC Images via Getty Images, FILE
During his civil fraud trial, Trump decided to voluntarily attend his hearings, splitting his time between the courtroom and the campaign trail, while using his prosecution to rally his supporters around what he considered as a militarization of the government, accusations that prosecutors have vehemently denied.
He made several smaller campaign stops during his seven-week criminal trial earlier this year and held a rally in the Bronx and Long Island to try to court Hispanic and black voters who make up the majority of the population of the region.
In this May 30, 2024 file photo, former U.S. President Donald Trump after the verdict is read at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York, United States.
Steven Hirsch/New York Post/Bloomberg via Getty Images, FILE
Throughout the former president’s travels through the deep blue Democratic state, he long joked that he could flip New York, a state that Democrats have won in the last nine elections.
In an arena format symbolizing confidence and celebrity status, Trump’s appearance will serve as his closing argument. In contrast, Vice President Kamala Harris speaks on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., where Trump spoke on January 6, 2021, before the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The former president, recalling the past nine years of campaigning for the nation’s highest office, billed the event as a “celebration of the whole.”
“Well, it’s New York, but it’s also kind of the end of my campaign. When you think about, I mean, I’ve been doing this for nine years now, we’ve had two big elections. One was better than the other,” Trump said.
Fans arrive for the game between the New York Rangers and the Florida Panthers at Madison Square Garden on October 24, 2024 in New York.
Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
On Sunday, Trump will be joined by several surrogates who appeared with him on the campaign trail, including North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Vivek Ramaswamy. House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Conference Chair Elise Stefanik will also be in attendance, along with several family members and donors.
Trump’s close friend and donor Steve Witkoff, who was playing golf with Trump during the second assassination attempt in West Palm Beach last month, is also expected to speak at the rally.
Trump’s rally in New York, while not a battleground state, will provide an opportunity to capture a large national audience given the region’s media market and location.
It’s a strategy campaign officials deployed during the latter part of Trump’s campaign, seeing the benefits of visiting places outside of battleground states to help get a message across.
For example, on Friday, Trump traveled to Texas to highlight immigration, creating a campaign split-screen for Harris who was gathering in Houston later in the day for an event focused on abortion rights.
