NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump plans to visit New York’s Harlem neighborhood on Tuesday after spending his second day as a criminal defendant in a Lower Manhattan courtroom.
Trump was expected to stop by the Sanaa Convenient Store, a small bodega that sells chips, soft drinks and other snacks. Trump aides said the former president and current Republican candidate chose the store because a violent attack on an employee took place there. He will also highlight consumer inflation under president Joe Bidenaides said.
The visit would be Trump’s first campaign appearance since his criminal hush-money trial began, making the presumptive Republican Party nominee the first former president in US history to face criminal charges.
Trump will be confined to the courtroom on most days, dramatically limiting his movements and his ability to campaign, raise money and make phone calls. Aides plan rallies and other political events on weekends and Wednesdays, the only weekday when the court is not supposed to be in session. The plans also include local appearances that Trump could make any day after court adjournments.
Trump’s stop in Harlem demonstrates the former president’s determination to amplify familiar campaign arguments, even within the constraints of being a criminal defendant.
In July 2022, Jose Alba, a clerk at the store in Hamilton Heights, a heavily Hispanic neighborhood of Harlem, was attacked by 35-year-old Austin Simon. The resulting altercation, captured on surveillance video, ended with Alba fatally stabbing Simon. Alba was arrested and charged with murder, but the Manhattan district attorney dropped the charges within weeks, saying they could not prove that Alba had not acted in self-defense.
On another night in August 2022, according to the New York Post, owner Osamah Aldhabyani was in the store when a customer walked in and an altercation broke out between the two. The customer was arrested, the newspaper reported.
Before his arrival, Trump’s campaign distributed material to journalists criticizing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for his handling of the stabbing case, including the weeks Alba spent in jail on Rikers Island without bail. Bragg oversees the office that is now prosecuting Trump.
The former president’s local appearance also confirms his intention to campaign in his home state, even as New York remains overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2020, Biden won more than 60% of the vote in the state and achieved even larger margins in New York City. Trump insists he can win New York in November anyway, and has considered holding rallies in the South Bronx and Queens, where the former president was born and raised, and even Madison Square Garden.
“I get to rent Madison Square Garden,” he said in an interview with Breitbart News. “That’s the belly of the beast, right?”
That would be a cost-prohibitive proposition, especially since his campaign has helped save money as Biden faces a fundraising shortfall.
“You know, the president is very interested in New York,” Trump senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita told The Associated Press last month when speaking about the campaign’s efforts to bring more states into play. Still, LaCivita laughed when asked if he agreed. ‘I don’t go out in front of the boss. I do what the boss says. The boss drives,” he said.
Trump has argued that the continued influx of migrants into the city, where he expanded his real estate empire and became a tabloid fixture, has made New Yorkers more willing to vote for him since his 2020 loss to Biden. The city has struggled to accommodate the newcomers, so many have been placed in city hotels.
‘I think we have a chance. New York has changed a lot in the last two years,” he told Fox News host Maria Bartimo. ‘The people of New York are angry. People who would never have voted for me because I’m a Republican – I mean, they’re Democrats… I think they’re going to vote for me. So I think we’re going to give New York a tough chance.”
Trump cited the 2022 New York governor’s race, when Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul prevailed over Republican former Rep. Lee Zeldin — but by a much tighter margin than usual for her party’s statewide nominees.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a key Trump ally, said Monday that Trump will campaign across the state while he is forced to stand trial in New York.
“He’s going to make the best of it,” she said, adding that “the Democrats in New York and the judge and everyone are really going to regret it.”
Trump, long a famous figure for New Yorkers, at least showed Tuesday that he can still turn heads in the city.
‘Papito Trump is coming. Yes!” said a passerby before the former president arrived.
Lesandra Carrion, 47, who lives nearby, came to see the former president when she heard he might be visiting.
She said she disagrees with everything Trump says or does, but stated that “he speaks the truth.” Carrion cited the rising migrant population and the strain on city resources. “I think he will make a difference,” she said of Trump.
As for his troubles at the courthouse on Manhattan’s south side, Carrion was dismissive. “He’s going to beat that,” she said. “In the end, we all make mistakes. But he is the truth and the light. I feel that God is in him.”
___ Associated Press writer Lisa Mascaro in Washington and Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.
