For one night only, then, at Maga-son Square Garden. Only time and historic perspective will measure the significance of this strange Sunday on the streets around the famous bowl-shaped theatre on Eighth Avenue.
If Donald Trump wins back the White House, his Manhattan rally will be interpreted as a publicity masterstroke, sucking up all the oxygen of election coverage on the penultimate weekend when the polls are deadlocked and nerves are fraught. If he loses, it may be remembered as his last mass public appearance.
For Republicans, this appearance of Donald Trump in Madison Square Garden – ‘the most famous arena in the world’ where Ali fought Frazier and Marilyn sang Happy Birthday, where Elvis played – was the apotheosis. It was the homecoming of a Queens-boy-made-good who can’t quite quit New York.
To appalled Democrats, it was nothing short of a sinister heist, and the week has been heavy with comparisons to the infamous America First pro-Nazi rally that took place at the same venue in February of 1939.
So it fell to Hulk Hogan to articulate the difference between this rally and that notorious event.
“You know something, Trumpomaniacs?” Hogan asked – or more accurately growled – at the crowd after taking the stage wearing – for reasons unclear – small, yellow, horn-rimmed sunglasses to contrast a red bandanna and matching vest, which he began to rip off at the start of the event before thinking better of it.
“I don’t see no stinkin’ Nazis in here. I don’t see no domestic terrorists in here. The only thing I see in here is a bunch of hard-working real Americans.”
The Hulk was one of a motley crew of Trump-ites who now stand in the first rank of Trump surrogates, and they were all on show here, from RFK jnr to Elon Musk to former mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani.
Trump has been accused of exaggerating his crowd size before but nobody will deny that he filled the Garden on this autumn Sunday. Many thousands of fans had stood in line along chilly, shaded 31st Street for three and four hours, making it as far as the underworld of the Garden itself before watching the glass doors shuttered and slowly realising that they weren’t getting in after all.
Then, an NYPD officer confirmed the worst, apologising, through a loudspeaker, that the arena was now full. Many had camped out overnight, but the arena had begun to fill up as soon as the doors opened. Most headed home; others stood to watch the show on the big screen outside the arena. They were learning, the hard way, that attending a Donald Trump rally is an exercise in endurance and perseverance.
Trump has always loved the idea of his arenas being filled beyond capacity, and minutes into his speech, he offered the seated audience a mental image of the many luckless outside, stretching down to “the beautiful, beautiful Hudson river … they are outside watching this now at levels never been seen before. I am thrilled to be back in the city I love”.
In truth, the crowd outside scarcely stretched to the Dunkin’ Donuts down the street. But those who did stay heard Trump promise: “This will be America’s new golden age. It is going to happen quickly too. Very quickly.”
One of those in the crowd outside was a supporter who gave his name as Pryme Minister, who had travelled down from Connecticut.
“I am happy everybody showed up and it was so packed we couldn’t get in. A little selfish wishing I could be in there enjoying every minute but I am happy that America is showing up for Trump in New York City,” he said before explaining why he was here for Trump.
“I’ve been Trump since day one. You know why? He is the first person ever that I saw defend America. I never saw any other billionaire or politician or elitist defend America. Even before I understood it. Once I started catching on to that thought process I looked back and was thinking: I remember when Trump used to say this.”
Pryme Minister believes this election represents the beginning of the end for the Democratic Party, as least regarding its black American support base.
“I think this is the death of the Democratic Party. And call a spade a spade, the black community has been exploited by the Democratic Party for years. Truth be told, the Republican Party is for the advancement of coloured people and all people. Trump is bringing black people, white people, Latino, Asian people together.”
Over on Sixth Avenue, near Greeley Square, another New Yorker, Ashea (no surname given), was also disappointed not to have made it into the Garden. She had heard about the comparisons to Sunday’s event with the 1939 rally.
“Yeah, I hear people compare Trump to nazism and to Hitler. I personally think it is outrageous. He has let so many black people out of prison who have been there for non-violent crimes, who have been sitting there for years and years. He freed tonnes of rappers, he is open to people’s freedom.
“One thing I find about the Blue [Democrat] side is that they like to use words to trick you in some sort of way. They also want me to think that they used ‘they’ to describe one person for years or that we use the term cis-gender for years. I’ve been alive 33 years and that’s never something I’ve been called. So, they use words to trick people and keep them uninformed and leave them susceptible to things that hurt them.”
Nearby, Billy Park, who had travelled from Massachusetts, carried a placard protesting ‘boys in girls’ sport’.
“It is my number one issue. It is why I am voting for sport. I was a college athlete. There is a safety concern. The fact that we have women who say they stand for women’s rights but they can’t even define what a freakin’ woman is? Isn’t that the most hypocritical thing? I was for Hilary in 2016. And I switched from Hilary to Tulsi Gabbard. The free speech is a big thing for me. If you are a conservative, you are attacked, mercilessly, where I live. You can’t have an opinion. You have Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard and RFK: there’s a reason those very different politically minded people are on the same team now.”
In the cordoned-off streets around the Garden, the locked-out Trump fans wandered around unsure of what to do with themselves and the streets were laden with merchandise stalls. Inside, while the main speakers, including JD Vance, stuck to a script lambasting Kamala Harris and leaning into its anti-immigration rhetoric, one of the most controversial remarks was delivered by a midafternoon warm-up comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe, who offered this quip: “I don’t know if you know but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it is called Puerto Rico.”
Within minutes, the Democratic Party released a social media video of a conversation between its vice-president pick, Tim Walz, and New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “Who is that jackwad?” Walz asked as soon as he heard the remark, nodding as Ocasio-Cortez said: “When you have some A-hole calling Puerto Rico floating garbage, know that that is what they think about you. It’s what they think about you; what they think about anyone making less money than them, it’s what they think about people serving them food in a restaurant. It’s what they think about the people who fold their clothes in a store.
“Like, are you serious? I want everyone in Philadelphia to see that clip. If you live in Philly, if you live in Reading, Pennsylvania: look at that … trash. What is trash is people just think of other human beings that way. And the thing that gets me is that these people rely, their entire lives, rely on working class people.”
This, then, was the division in political sentiment in America on the second-last Sunday before the election. If there is one moment the Republican strategists could erase from their perfect Sunday, it would be that remark. Within the hour, the hugely popular Puerto Rican rapper and singer Bad Bunny had endorsed Harris.
But nothing was going to spoil Donald Trump’s homecoming. His speech did not detour much from the standard vision of a great country brought to its knees by the radical left and murderous immigrants, along with promises to restore it to its former greatness. It was obvious he was enjoying his Garden debut.
Still, it was difficult to associate a day of such potent political symbolism and heavy rhetoric with Madison Square Garden, a venue that has always been associated with escapism: with Patrick Ewing or Billy Joel.
And the avenues of Manhattan are so clearly defined that you could walk for just ten minutes and slip away completely from the madness and straight back into what Dorothy Parker, in one of her more romantic moments, referred to as “the sharp picture of New York at its best, on a shiny blue-and-white autumn day with its buildings cut diagonally in halves of light and shadow, with its straight neat avenues coloured with quick throngs, like confetti in a breeze”.
This may or may not be a vision of the city that Donald Trump would recognise. But every New Yorker has their own version of the city. Outside Moynihan Hall, the jazzed-up reimagining of the old Penn Station, a small, vocal group of anti-Trump protesters had gathered. Erin Roy was among them. She’d delayed cooking Sunday lunch for the family to travel into the city with her Harris/Walz sign and figured there’d be thousands of others. “But I folded it away because I was scared,” she says.
She agrees that Trump has a right to hire the Garden if he so chooses. “To me this is like his middle finger to my city. I think there is room for a lot of different kind of New Yorkers. So yeah he has a right to have a rally. And I have a right to be here. I think he is trying to stir the pot. In terms of the symbolism of where he is today. It is definitely not coincidental. I think that the language has come into focus in the last two weeks because the people around him, the people who are his cabinet, are the ones using that language. It is not the people here across this line who are using that language.
“I think when John Kelly [the retired Marine Corps general who served as Trump’s White House chief of staff] talks about fascism, you have to listen. That is a different thing to protesters who have felt strongly for a long time. And he [Trump] is not going to have that wall around him any more if he gets in. It is a different thing this time.”
It is, without question, a different thing, a different time. All the skyscrapers were lit and the sky dark by the time Donald Trump had finished speaking in the Garden. Outside, the streets were a-squawk with police sirens preparing to transport the 45th president up Fifth Avenue to Trump Tower.
Inside, Trump himself lingered on stage with his wife watching an operatic crooner giving it all the lungs as he belted out Sinatra’s My Way.
There was no encore. Eight days out.
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