Surviving Trump’s Hate-Filled Takeover of Madison Square Garden

M
idtown Manhattan is not usually a place to find someone wearing a Make America Great Again hat. Donald Trump lost the New York City borough by nearly 75 points in 2020, and by even more than that four years earlier. But on Sunday, ahead of Trump’s mega-rally at Madison Square Garden, the area was overrun with red apparel and a seemingly unlimited variety of memes glorifying the former president and denigrating his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris. 

“I like this city for the first time in my life,” a young man said giddily as he and his friends rounded the corner of 33rd and 6th on his way to get in line for the rally. “This is wonderful.”

The MAGA horde, like New York City itself, was incredibly diverse, and largely in from out of town. They came from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Westchester County, most of them here to see “the man,” as a 24-year-old from Connecticut put it to me, for the first time. Young Republicans waited stoically in their suits while a dude in a “I WAS GOING TO BE A DEMOCRAT FOR HALLOWEEN BUT MY HEAD COULDN’T FIT UP MY ASS” shirt passed a joint to his friends — or perhaps to people he’d just met. Others brown-bagged tall cans of beer. “U-S-A!” and “Fight! Fight! Fight!” chants bubbled up and died down. A passing pickup truck honked in solidarity.

Trump’s stop in New York City, with less than two weeks until Election Day, was unorthodox, given that New York is a solidly blue state. He described his Madison Square Garden party as a “celebration” last week, and the event did indeed feel more like a pre-emptive victory party than something intended to make inroads with any particular voting bloc. Trump has said he thinks he can win New York, a prospect that was dubious even to some of the MAGA faithful I spoke to on Sunday, although everyone felt he had the national race in the bag.

“No,” George Santos, the disgraced former New York congressman, said flatly when I asked him if Trump had a chance to win the state. Why was he holding this massive event here this close to Election Day, then? “I think this is more about creating enough momentum in the state to help candidates down-ballot,” said Santos. New York Republicans flipping several seats in 2022 helped the party take control of the House of Representatives and retaining those seats this year will go a long way toward holding control of the chamber. They already lost one of them when Republicans kicked the scandal-ridden Santos out of Congress last December. 

“Don’t you think he should have had some of those candidates on the roster of speakers tonight, then?” I asked.

“It’s up to those candidates whether they would have wanted to.”

“Well, I’m sure they would have wanted to. But they’re not on the list.”

“Allegiances run shallow in Republican circles,” Santos claimed. “You’d be shocked.”

In truth, the Madison Square Garden rally was not about down-ballot races. It was about Trump making his home city part of his 2024 campaign story — a big, glitzy, historic part of it, in the city’s most storied venue. The lineup was a who’s who of his political movement, featuring nearly 30 speakers, including Elon Musk, Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance, Robert Kennedy Jr., Dana White, Stephen Miller, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Trump’s sons, plus a gaggle of lower-tier MAGA personalities. Many of them alluded to the building’s history, while scoffing at comparisons the increasingly openly fascist Trump’s rally has drawn to a Nazi rally there on the eve of World War II.

The rally, as has been the case with pretty much every Trump event since he announced his 2016 candidacy a few blocks north inside Trump Tower, was focused on immigration. Most of the supporters I spoke to outside the venue cited it as their top issue, and they all had stories of how bad things had gotten. Robert, a 65-year-old who was here from Sarasota selling Trump merch, claimed he unwittingly stayed in a motel in Phoenix that the Biden administration had commandeered to house migrants, and when he got to his room there were “people shooting up dope, puking blood all over.” He said migrants were peering into his car looking for stuff to steal.

Robert’s story was somehow tame compared to the fear-mongering, grievance-airing, and hate the speakers spewed inside the venue. One of the first to take the stage, a nakedly racist comedian named Tony Hinchcliffe, called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage” and joked about a Black man in the audience carving watermelons at a Halloween party. The comments have drawn bipartisan backlash. Trump’s campaign tried to distance itself from Hinchcliffe later in the day, only for Donald Trump Jr. to repost one of his tweets griping that people can’t take a joke.

The speaker after Hinchcliffe, an artist named Scott Lobaido, put up his middle finger as a message to the New York art world that had rejected him. Then came conservative radio host Sid Rosenberg, who called Hillary Clinton a “sick son of a bitch,” maligned “fucking illegals,” and complained that he didn’t get as much time as the comedian or the artist. Real estate investor Grant Cardone bashed the “scumbag liberal judge” who presided over Trump’s New York criminal trial, and mocked Harris’ “pimp handlers.” David Rem, billed as a childhood friend of Trump’s, called Harris “the devil” and “the antichrist” before brandishing a crucifix and announcing he was running for mayor of New York City.

The gleeful mudslinging continued as a trio of surprise guests were rolled out after the requisite appearances from a handful of MAGA politicians and Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who intoned that “America is for Americans and Americans only.”

Tucker Carlson took the stage to huge applause before maniacally mocking Harris as “a Samoan, Malaysian, low-IQ former California prosecutor” who couldn’t possibly win the election, while praising Trump for liberating the nation “from the obligation to tell lies.” He was followed by Hulk Hogan, who ripped off his shirt, growled what seemed to be a crude joke about Harris, and spent several minutes after he finished speaking flexing and striking poses as his theme song played. Then there was Dr. Phil, who has apparently replaced Dr. Oz as MAGA’s designated Oprah-connected quack medical professional. 

I’d been in my seat for over five hours at this point, and I was starting to wonder whether this much continuous exposure to bilious MAGA talking points, to garish red and blue lighting and jumbotron graphics depicting migrant gang members ready to move in next door and kill me, was beginning to warp my conception of reality. Was a totally packed Madison Square Garden really chanting “Doc-tor Phil! Doc-tor Phil! Doc-tor Phil!” right now, or was I hallucinating? Trump was already supposed to have taken the stage and there were still a bunch of speakers left. Was this event ever going to end? Was this hell?

Thankfully, Dr. Phil’s somnolent drawl brought me back to earth in time to register what may have been the most ironic argument of the night given everything that had come before it. Democrats are the real bullies, he tried to explain, touting himself as an expert on the subject. “Bullying is when you seek to harm somebody, you seek to intimidate, coerce, cause distress, fear, risk to their well-being,” he said. “It can be physical, verbal, relation, or cyberbullying. It’s always wrong.”

Trump may be the most famous and prototypical bully this nation has ever produced, of course, and the thrill he and his supporters derive from demeaning and, in many cases, dehumanizing the Americans who oppose them, or migrants seeking refuge and safety, coursed through Midtown Manhattan on Sunday. It was on the streets in the apparel they wore and sold — including one shirt depicting Trump in a Hannibal Lecter mask and the words “EAT THE DEMS” — and it was in Madison Square Garden whenever a speaker would invoke, say, “Tampon Tim!” or level a misogynist attack against Harris.

This was particularly true when Trump was onstage. The crowd was relatively subdued as the former president droned through his usual rally routine, but any deviation to insult Harris’ intelligence or call the press the “enemy of the people” sent a spark through the arena. Trump’s supporters didn’t travel from other states to hear him talk about the economy. They came to hear him riff on “Sleepy Joe,” to demean and to give them permission to demean others, themselves. It’s why seats were empty by the time Trump gave his closing spiel about making America great again, before bringing out opera singer Christopher Maccio to belt a rendition of “New York, New York.”

The MAGA faithful were still riding high outside of the Garden after Trump finished. They chanted. They took photos in front of the arena. They crowded around Sarah Palin, who wore a short fur coat and posed for selfies. One young Trump fan in a shirt featuring nothing but the former president’s outstretched fist from the aftermath of the Butler assassination attempt chatted with her for a few seconds before walking away with a girl and letting the scrum close back around Palin.

“Who was that?” the girl asked.

“She used to be the governor of Alaska,” he said.

Topher Townsend, a TikTok influencer and rapper, posed for pictures with fans a few yards away in his classic red MAGA hat. I asked him about the night and what he made of Trump coming to New York City at such a key juncture of the race. “We might not win New York this time around, but he sent a message that New York is not safe,” he said. “He’s coming out to places that are typically blue, and I think that’s what Republicans should be doing. So often we just sit back and relax, and that’s how we lost Georgia last time. We didn’t think it was a swing state until they made it one. So no one thinks New York is a swing state until we make it one.”

“After tonight and looking at what’s going on now,” he said, gesturing to other red hats outside the Garden, “you can tell that it’s Trump country, baby.”

It was still New York City, though. As I turned the corner, I noticed two men arguing with a group of Trump supporters. One of them preached about protecting womens’ right to control their own bodies, while the other went back and forth with someone far younger than him who claimed Martin Luther King Jr. would endorse Trump if he were alive today. The man’s wife was trying to get him to follow her toward the subway as he pushed back.

“Bye, Darryl! Bye!” she called back at him, feigning like she was going to leave without him. “Why waste your time with an idiot?”

I walked over and asked her what she thought about what was happening. “I think it’s disgusting,” she said. “Everyone is entitled to their rights, but you have someone who is 25-years-old trying to debate with someone who is 59-years-old and whose father walked with Martin Luther King.”

Darryl, a native of Hollis Queens, caught up with us a few minutes later. He explained that his father walked with King in the ‘60s, and that a real leader is supposed to represent all cultures, not talk negatively about them. He talked about how Trump made fun of disabled people, how he botched the government’s response to Covid-19, and how it’s time to give a younger generation a chance. “This rally here, I don’t know if it separates New York and gets people upset,” he said. “[Trump] gets people upset. He riles people up. He riles me up.”

I asked him what he made of Trump saying he’s going to win New York, and all the people out here wearing MAGA hats that he had to navigate. “We’ll see what happens,” he says. “Everybody has to get out and vote on Election Day. Hopefully New York stands behind the standards of right and wrong. I’m for right and wrong and equal rights. If you’re wrong, you shouldn’t be president.”

Darryl and his wife descended into the subway, and I walked a few blocks in the other direction to get on my train. I didn’t see any MAGA hats down in the station. A few people stood watching a guy play electric blues guitar on the platform, seemingly unaware of what had been going on a few hundred yards away.