“Like it or not, this is a rally,” the former President said, seemingly a little embarrassed by the unremarkable size of the crowd.
On Thursday, Donald Trump held a modestly attended campaign rally in the nation’s largest city. A few thousand people gathered in Crotona Park, in the Bronx, to cheer on the man who over the years has referred to New York City as a crime-infested “hell hole,” an unlivable “ghost town,” and a lawless community ruled by “roving bands of wild criminals.” In the crowd, there were Black men and women in Trump gear. Asian American families with young children. People in Trump gear waving Puerto Rican flags. People in Trump gear sitting in wheelchairs. Men in yarmulkes. Men in MAGA gear smoking weed. At least one woman in a “Lesbians for Trump” T-shirt. In 2020, eighty-three per cent of Bronx voters cast their ballots for Joe Biden. This still means that more than sixty-seven thousand people in the borough voted for Trump. “Like it or not, this is a rally,” Trump said, seemingly a little embarrassed by the unremarkable size of the crowd.
The rally was a deliberate distraction. At the other end of the 5 train’s line, in the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse, Trump is still facing charges for falsifying business records related to checks he made out to his old lawyer Michael Cohen, allegedly as reimbursement for hush money that Cohen had paid to the adult-film star Stormy Daniels, in the lead-up to the 2016 election. Tuesday was the last day of testimony in the case, and the jury is expected to start their deliberations after the Memorial Day weekend. In the meantime, Trump put on a smile. “Would anybody like to hear ‘The Snake’?” he asked on Thursday evening, referring to a fable he often recites alongside his anti-immigrant rhetoric, in which an old woman takes in a frozen snake, nurses it back to health, and then is bitten and killed by it. The crowd in Crotona Park roared—a diverse New York City crowd cheering for xenophobia. “We’re going to do it right now, for the great people of the Bronx,” Trump said.
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