Trump fills Madison Square Garden with anger, hate and racist threats | US elections 2024

Anger and vitriol took center stage at New York's Madison Square Garden on Sunday evening as Donald Trump and a group of campaign aides held a rally marked by racist comments, crude insults and dangerous threats against immigrants.

Nine days before the election, Trump used the New York rally to repeat his claim that he was fighting “the enemy within” and again promised to launch “the largest deportation program in American history” while spewing incoherent chatter about the Ending a phone call with a “very, very important person” so he could watch one of Elon Musk's rockets land.

The event at Madison Square Garden in central Manhattan has been compared to an infamous Nazi rally at the arena in 1939. Tim Walz, Kamala Harris' vice president, said there was a “direct parallel” between the two events. and the Democratic National Committee on Sunday projected images on the building's exterior repeating claims from Trump's former chief of staff that Trump had “praised Hitler.”

There was certainly a somber tone during the hour-long rally, with one speaker describing Puerto Rico, home to 3.2 million U.S. citizens, as a “garbage island”; Tucker Carlson mocks Harris' race; a radio host who calls Hillary Clinton a “sick bastard”; and a crucifix-wearing childhood friend of Trump declaring that Harris is “the Antichrist.”

The comments from Puerto Rico's Tony Hinchliffe, a podcaster with a history of racist remarks, were immediately criticized by the Harris-Walz campaign. Ricky Martin, the Puerto Rican pop star who has more than 18 million followers on Instagram, wrote in a post: “This is what they think about us. Vote for @kamalaharris.”

Trump campaign spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez said in a statement: “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”

But that could prove problematic in Pennsylvania, where the majority of the swing state's 580,000 eligible Latino voters are of Puerto Rican descent. Both campaigns have sought to appeal to Latino voters in the final weeks of the campaign, and Harris visited a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia earlier Sunday, where she outlined plans to launch an “economic opportunity task force” for Puerto Rico.

The combative mood didn't change when Trump began speaking, as the former president quickly repeated his promise to “launch the largest deportation program in American history.”

Trump continued his frequent rants about immigration, claiming a “wild Venezuelan prison gang” has “taken over Times Square,” which will come as a surprise to anyone who has recently visited the New York landmark. The former president also falsely stated that the Biden administration had no money to respond to a recent hurricane in North Carolina because “they spent all their money flying in illegal immigrants and flying them in on beautiful jet planes.”

Trump's usual dystopian threats were on offer as the 78-year-old expanded on his claims about the “enemy within” – a group of political opponents he said would attack the military if elected.

“We’re just not running against Kamala. I think many of our politicians here tonight know that. She means nothing, she's a mere vessel, that's all she is,” Trump said.

“We are running against something much bigger than Joe or Kamala and far more powerful than them, namely a huge, evil radical left machine that runs today's Democratic Party. They’re just vessels.”

Trump's appearance at Madison Square Garden – home of the New York Knicks and Rangers and venue for countless legendary acts, including Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and John Lennon's final concert appearance before his assassination – marks the culmination of his strange love-hate relationship with his hometown. Despite the fact that he has no chance of winning New York state – Harris is ahead by 15 points in the Tracker Five Thirty Eight poll – this was his third rally here this year.

In May, he made a bold attempt to win over black and Latino voters in the South Bronx, just a few miles from his childhood home in Queens. Then, in September, he set up shop in a New York City suburb on Long Island.

It is unclear what Trump intends to do by staging this trilogy of seemingly pointless election appearances. He has used his rambling speeches to take a nostalgic stroll down memory lane to what he considers the golden days of his life as a New York real estate tycoon.

But he has also portrayed New York City in the darkest and most dystopian terms, as a rat-infested haven for drug addicts, gangs and “illegal immigrants” housed in luxury apartments while military veterans shiver on the sidewalks. His venomous language may reflect his bitterness toward the city of his birth, which convicted him of 34 felonies in separate trials, found his company, the Trump Organization, guilty of criminal tax fraud and held him personally liable for sexual abuse.

On Sunday, Trump again criticized his hometown, claiming the Biden administration had forced “hundreds of thousands of really rough people” into the city and telling New Yorkers that even though police said crime was down: “Their crime is through the roof. “Everything is going through the roof.”

The combative tone had already been struck earlier in the afternoon when several of the opening speakers made obscene and hateful remarks.

Hinchcliffe's comments about Puerto Rico – he also made suggestive sexual references to Latina women – drew huge laughter from the crowd. A comment by radio host Sid Rosenberg that Hillary Clinton was a “sick bastard” was similarly well received, as was Rosenberg's claim that “the damn illegals get everything they want.”

David Rem, a Republican politician whom the Trump campaign described as the former president's childhood friend, called Harris “the devil” and “the Antichrist” to loud cheers. Later, Rem pulled out a crucifix and announced that he was running for mayor of New York.

When Trump announced his intention to hold a rally at Madison Square Garden just days before the election, critics were quick to point out historical parallels to one of the most infamous events in New York history. On February 20, 1939, just seven months before Germany invaded Poland, the pro-Hitler German-American Bund held a mass Nazi rally in the very same arena.

Organizers chose George Washington's birthday as the date to present their vision of an Aryan Christian country committed to white supremacy and American patriotism. They erected a huge portrait of Washington, which they flanked with swastika flags next to the Star-Spangled Banner.

More than 20,000 American Nazi sympathizers attended, many wearing stormtrooper uniforms and saluting with the Sieg Heil salute. American Bund “leader” Fritz Kuhn told the crowd that America would be “given back to the people who founded it” and lambasted the “Jewish-controlled press.”

Hillary Clinton pointed out the similarities between the two events in an interview with CNN last week, and at a rally in Nevada on Sunday, Walz was happy to continue the comparison.

“Donald Trump got this big rally going at Madison Square Garden,” Walz said.

“There is a direct parallel to a large rally that took place at Madison Square Garden in the mid-1930s. And don’t think for a second that he doesn’t know exactly what they’re doing there.”

The Trump campaign reacted angrily to the allegations, calling Clinton's comments “disgusting.” One of the few people who referenced the 1939 rally on Sunday was Hulk Hogan, who walked up to wrestling music, struggled for several seconds to rip his shirt off, and then claimed, “I see here no fucking Nazis.”

After a night of fire and fury, it will be up to American voters to decide.