CLAIM: The Trump rally in Madison Square Garden, Manhattan, is a reenactment of a Nazi rally from the 1930s.
VERDICT: FALSE. The claim is so absurd as to be disqualifying, and suggests a desperate, and losing, campaign.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), speaking to supporters in Las Vegas, Nevada, claimed Sunday that former President Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden was an attempt to reenact a Nazi rally held there in the 1930s.
“Don’t miss on this, go do your Google on this — Donald Trump’s got this big rally going at Madison Square Garden,” he told supporters. “There’s a direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the mid-1930s at Madison Square Garden. And don’t think that he doesn’t know for one second exactly what they’re doing there.”
Walz was citing a conspiracy theory first floated by Democrat strategist James Carville, and repeated by him and former nominee Hillary Clinton.
As Breitbart News noted earlier this month, the venue has hosted countless events — including anti-Nazi rallies:
The popular venue in midtown Manhattan is the home arena of the New York Knicks. It hosts famous musicians, most recently a residency by Billy Joel that lasted for several years. In 1933, Jews held an anti-Nazi rally there.
But according to Carville, the fact that Trump is holding a rally there on October 27 is a signal to Nazis because Madison Square Garden also hosted the German American Bund’s pro-Nazi rally in 1939, before World War II.
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According to the National Park Service’s history of the old Madison Square Garden site, there was also another anti-Nazi gathering at Madison Square Garden in 1943, once the scale of the Holocaust was becoming increasingly widely known.
As Breitbart News noted, there were many Jews at the rally on Sunday. Some Jews took offense at the claim that the rally was a Nazi reenactment — notably former Democrat Assemblyman Dov Hikind, now a Trump supporter:
The Harris/Walz campaign, in apparent desperation, has been trying to tie Trump to Hitler in its closing days — going beyond the debunked “very fine people” hoax and repeating debunked claims that Trump admired Hitler’s generals. Trump supporters have complained that such rhetoric could encourage violence and further assassination attempts.
Walz, who has an unfortunate history of praising people who actually support Hitler, provided no basis for his claim.
Notably, Walz has said misinformation that includes “hate speech” should be prosecuted, never mind free speech.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
