Former President Donald Trump is campaigning in one of the most Democratic counties in the nation Thursday.
Former President Donald Trump campaigned Thursday in one of the most Democratic counties in the nation, holding a rally in the South Bronx as he tries to woo minority voters days before a Manhattan jury will begin deliberations on whether to convict him of felony charges in his criminal hush money trial.
Trump addressed supporters in Crotona Park, a public green space in a neighborhood that is among the city’s most diverse and its most impoverished, a change from the majority-white areas where he holds most of his rallies. While the crowd was not quite as diverse as the South Bronx as a whole, it included large numbers of Black and Hispanic voters; Spanish was heard throughout the crowd.
Trump cast himself as a better president for Black and Hispanic voters than Biden as he railed against President Joe Biden’s immigration policies. He insisted “the biggest negative impact” of the influx of migrants in New York is “against our Black population and our Hispanic population who are losing their jobs, losing their housing, losing everything they can lose. They’re the ones that are affected most by what’s happening.”
Some in the crowd responded by chanting, “Build the wall,” a reference to Trump’s push while in the White House to build a U.S.-Mexico border barrier.
With Trump confined to New York for his trial for much of the last six weeks, the presumptive Republican nominee’s campaign has planned a series of local stops across his hometown before and after court. He visited a bodega in Harlem, dropped by a construction site and held a photo op at a local firehouse.
But the Bronx rally is his first event open to the general public as he insists he is making a play to win an overwhelmingly Democratic state that hasn’t backed a Republican for president since Ronald Reagan in 1984. Besides creating a spectacle of rallygoers and protesters, the rally also gave Trump an opportunity to highlight what he argues are advantages on economic and immigration issues that could cut into key Democratic voting blocs.
“The strategy is to demonstrate to the voters of the Bronx and New York that this isn’t your typical presidential election, that Donald Trump is here to represent everybody and get our country back on track,” said Florida Republican Rep.
