Former President Donald Trump stuck to campaign messaging Thursday before walking into his business records trial by announcing plans to hold historic rallies in the Bronx and at Madison Square Garden.
The last time the Bronx was the center of a Republican presidential campaign was in 1984 when Ronald Reagan won by a landslide.
“I think we have a good chance of winning here and we’re gonna give it a big plan,” Trump said about New York State. “We’re going to the South Bronx to do a rally.”
“We’re going to be doing a rally at Madison Square Garden, we believe,” Trump added.
The rallies will focus on honoring police, firemen, and teachers. “We’ll be honoring the people that make New York work,” Trump said. “It’ll be very exciting, but we think we have a really good chance of winning.”
Trump also stayed on campaign message by attacking President Joe Biden’s costly economy, his open borders, and the anti-Israel protests around America’s “elite” universities.
Pro-Palestinian protesters hold a small rally outside of Columbia University on April 24, 2024, in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
“[Police] would like to be at the colleges” to secure the campuses “because what’s happening at the colleges is a disgrace,” Trump said, drawing a contrast between the police guarding the Manhattan courthouse and the college campuses. “This courthouse is locked down and there’s not a person within five blocks. They have more police here.”
“This is the worst-run country right now,” the former president continued. “All you have to do is look at the millions of people coming in from prisons, from mental institutions — coming in at levels we’ve never seen before.”
“So I’m gonna go in now and sit in front of a case — election interference,” Trump said. “But I guess based on what I’m looking at, it’s driving up my poll numbers.”
Trump upended Biden’s recent national polling gains by dominating Biden in swing states, a Morning Consult/Bloomberg poll found Wednesday. Trump leads in six of the seven 2024 swing state races, it found, signifying Trump’s continued dominance over Biden.
Trump’s messaging drew praise from one of his establishment detractors, Karl Rove, who is allied with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY). “He’s done this several times before,” Rove told Fox News about Trump’s on-message tactic. “Whoever’s advising him on this ought to be given a gold star because it’s good advice.”
“It is better for him to grab moments like this, walking in and commenting on the news of the day,” Rove said, “rather than making it all about what he feels [about the criminal trial]. And he feels obviously strongly about this — about … his treatment in this case; we’ve heard that once or twice already,” he added. “We don’t need to hear it again.”
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former GOP War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
