Even for a man known for his bombast, Donald Trump’s foray into one of the poorest, most diverse and staunchly democratic parts of America, New York’s South Bronx, on Thursday evening was an offensive move of breathtaking audacity.
His rally in the melting pot of hip-hop, where 95% of the population is black or Hispanic and 35% live below the poverty line, was like voluntarily stepping into the lion’s den. As Trump, he called it a historic victory.
“When I woke up this morning I wondered if it would be hostile or friendly. It was a love fest!” he said toward the end of his 90-minute speech.
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Just a few blocks from Crotona Park — the site of Trump’s first campaign rally in upstate New York since 2016 — lies the congressional district of his nemesis, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Trump infamously told AOC to “go back” to the country she came from — a bold line to take with a woman born in the Bronx.
But despite arriving in a New York borough home to some of the Democratic party’s fiercest critics, Trump stepped onto the stage one balmy evening as if returning to his own personal playground. “Here in the Bronx, I’m happy to be back in the city where I grew up, the city where I spent my life,” he said.
What he emphatically did not say was that he did not simply show up in New York after a long absence. Of course, he has spent most of the past six weeks in a frigid courtroom just 10 miles south of Thursday’s rally site, his eyes often closed, as a jury considers whether to convict him of falsifying company records to… to cover up the alleged matter. affair with Stormy Daniels.
In five days he will be back at the Manhattan courthouse for closing arguments, after which the jury will be sent out to decide his fate.
AOC mercilessly goaded Trump over his ongoing legal troubles. In comments before the meeting, she said the only reason the event even happened was because he was stuck in the city during the trial.
‘The man practically has the legal version of an ankle bracelet on him’ she said.
By all accounts, the experience of enduring twenty days of court from People v. Donald J Trump has been excruciating for Trump. He has been thrust into a world over which he has no control, where people do not look at him, where he looks “haggard and rumpled,” as Maggie Haberman of the New York Times memorably portrayed him.
By Thursday evening, the withered Trump was gone, replaced by a better-known figure: Trump as architect of the best economy on earth; the most successful businessman and dealmaker ever…and also the “hottest” (his description).
In epic twists that have become increasingly common at Trump rallies, he made several recollections, as if nostalgia has become his balm for legal pain. He detailed his triumphs as a real estate developer in New York, so much so that at times it seemed as if the city’s legendary skyline had been built by his own hands.
He alternated between lavishly praising New York City and denigrating it as a metropolis in decline. It was both the greatest city in the world and had produced heroes like Teddy Roosevelt, Frank Sinatra and Babe Ruth; and a Third World catastrophe littered with discarded needles, drugged homeless people, buckling sidewalks, and lunatics pushing innocent bystanders onto subway tracks.
The Trump campaign had seen the Bronx rally as an opportunity to show the world how well the former president is doing with Hispanic and black voters. A number of recent polls show that his fortunes may be starting to improve among these two strongly Democratic-leaning voting groups.
“Who said we’re not going to win New York? We’re going to win New York City!” he prophesied, before making a naked bid to win the majority-minority vote of the South Bronx. He claimed to have lifted 6.6 million people out of poverty while in the White House, comparing that to the “disaster” of Biden’s economy, which saw African American earnings fall by nearly 6%.
“African Americans are being slaughtered. Spanish Americans are being slaughtered. The biggest negative impact of the millions and millions of illegals coming into this country is on our Black population and our Hispanic population, who are losing their jobs, losing housing, losing everything.”
Trump’s prediction that he will win New York is fanciful, political observers have no doubt about that. The last time a Republican president won in the Bronx was Calvin Coolidge in 1924. Trump lost to Joe Biden here in 2020 by a whopping 84% to 16%.
Which doesn’t mean that nothing happens. The Crotona Park crowd was undoubtedly more diverse than the typical, almost exclusively white Trump rally.
Up to a quarter of the thousands of people who came to hear him (the New York City Parks Department said Trump’s campaign had a permit for up to 3,500 people) were Hispanic or black. Some supporters proudly wore their Make America Great Again policy on their sleeves.
“I am a dyed-in-the-wool Republican,” read one T-shirt. A group of three Hispanic women waiting for the Secret Service to screen them early in the evening chanted “Trumpito!” “Trumpito!” as they danced to the official Trump Latinos theme song.
Theo Diakite, 29, an African American who lives near the park, said he was drawn to the meeting out of curiosity. He has never voted in his life, but this year he feels tempted to support Trump.
He notices that other people around him share that curiosity. “There are many people who were strongly against him in 2020, but are no longer so sure.”
When Diakite told his father, a lifelong Democrat, that he was going to the Trump rally, he expected an altercation. To his surprise, his father replied, “Yes man, I am very disappointed with what has happened in the last two years.”
Anson Paul, 30, a black personal fitness trainer from the South Bronx who voted for Barack Obama twice, wore a red Maga hat backwards. That was a sign of the times, he said.
“In 2020 I wouldn’t have worn a Maga hat – it was crazy, people could have assaulted me.” Now, he said, things were changing.
“We are still in the minority, but the people of the Bronx are waking up to Donald Trump.”
Tiana Diaz, 43, was born and raised in the South Bronx to a family of Puerto Rican descent. She said she was proud to wear a pink Make America Great Again hat after voting for Trump in 2016 and 2020.
For Diaz, Trump’s legal troubles in court only deepened her admiration for him. It reminds her, she said, of why she turned to him in the first place: the feeling that everyone in the “system” was out to get him.
“I have BS radar and I knew it was all nonsense,” she said. “That process is just nonsense.”
Democratic organizers and labor leaders held their own counter-demonstration on a separate corner of Crotona Park. Reports said it was a small gathering of only about 200 people, but it had an apt title: “Trump Is Not Welcome in the Bronx.”
