NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump ventured Thursday night into one of the most Democratic counties in the country, where he was warmly welcomed by what appeared to be a crowd of several thousand.
Those in attendance at the Crotona Park rally in South Bronx were white, Hispanic, black, and Asian, resulting in a far more diverse makeup than is typical for the former president‘s campaign events.
Cristian Ramos, a Bronx resident from Ecuador, said former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio first turned him off to the Democratic Party and that he planned to vote for Trump.
“We want it back to Republican area, and Bronx could turn blue to red,” Ramos said.
Ramos, who said he owns a mobile phone repair business, said de Blasio “refused to have a conversation with the prisons, with the police department … so they have a not good relationship.”
“After that, all that happened is a lot of people do whatever they want on the street, on the train, in the subway and the bus stations,” he said.
Jewish New Yorkers also peppered the event, including several in New York’s Hasidic population.
Ariel Kohane said Trump’s “gonna win New York. He’s gonna win 49 or 50 states. His poll numbers are showing that he’s very close in New York and New Jersey.”
Trump’s unusual appearance in the Democratic stronghold came as he aims to appeal to black and Hispanic voters, particularly as polls show his opponent, President Joe Biden, struggles with maintaining his party’s typically tight grip on those voting blocs.
“Who said we’re not gonna win New York? We’re gonna win New York so big,” Trump said to approving cheers. “You know if we win New York, we win the whole thing. Wouldn’t it be nice?”
The state has not voted for a Republican president since Ronald Reagan in 1984. Trump has garnered nearly 40% of the vote in the last two elections, but his visit to the Bronx was a sign of his ambition to flip New York. The jurisdiction was second only to Manhattan in terms of the state’s highest percentage of Biden votes in 2020.
Trump lost in the Bronx in the last election by nearly 70 points, but he lost by more in 2016, an indication that Trump’s appeal has strengthened in an area dense with poor and working-class voters.
While Trump was on atypical rally turf in the Bronx, where more than half of the residents are Hispanic and another approximately 30% are black, he appeared at home as he hearkened back to his New York roots throughout much of the event.
Initially famous as a New York real estate mogul, Trump recalled with nostalgic detail his involvement in renovating the Wollman Rink in Central Park, the “magnificent, world-class golf course” at Ferry Point, and Grand Central Terminal.
“I was very much responsible for the Jacob Javits Convention Center, where Hillary Clinton was going to have her big evening. That was not good. Remember?” Trump added, prompting chants of “Lock her up!”
A woman named Juana, who spoke little English, was less optimistic than others about Trump’s prospects of flipping a solid blue state.
“Maybe no,” she said when asked if she thought it was possible. “But we happy because he’s here,” she added.
Trump’s appearance comes as his historic criminal trial, taking place at a Manhattan courthouse less than an hour down the road, nears its end. While the trial is on a weeklong pause, Trump has sat as a defendant in the hush money case for nearly six weeks, and a jury is set to deliberate on his fate next week.
Dozens of signs and T-shirts depicting Trump’s viral mugshot from a separate criminal case in Georgia appeared throughout Thursday’s rally crowd.
Asked what one attendee, Manhattan resident Lawrence Garcia, thought of the New York trial, Garcia quickly responded, “Oh, bull****.”
During his court appearances, Trump has routinely railed against Judge Juan Merchan and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and called the case a Biden-orchestrated witch hunt. However, during his rally, taking place in the very city where he could be convicted or exonerated in a matter of days, Trump mentioned the trial only once as an aside during his two-hour speech.
Instead, he focused on a gamut of topics most pressing to the demographic in front of him, including the economy, the border crisis, crime — and the New York City subways, which he said were “squalid and unsafe.”
Trump vowed to renovate the subway system and make it “the most beautiful transit system anywhere in the world.”
To some, Trump was unwelcome in the blue bastion, and a small counter rally with packed attendance took place nearby.
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Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), a Bronx Democrat, accused Trump on X of hosting “transplants” at his event.
“Donald Trump’s rally may be IN the South Bronx but it is not OF the South Bronx,” Torres said. “Bluntly put, the Trump transplants are much whiter than the locals of the South Bronx, which is almost entirely Latino and Black.”
