NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump took the stage Sunday in front of an enormous crowd at Madison Square Garden, delivering his campaign message to the world with just eight days until Americans finish casting their ballots.
The 19,500-seat venue, home to the New York Knicks and New York Rangers, sold out within three hours of the Trump campaign announcing it was giving away tickets to the rally.
“This epic event, in the heart of President Trump’s home city, will be a showcase of the historic political movement that President Trump has built in the final days of the campaign,” the Trump Team said before the event.
The massive event in New York City is in some ways a natural fit for Mr. Trump. It was his longtime hometown and the heart of his business empire before he moved permanently to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
However, the city has turned on him.
A Manhattan jury this year convicted him of 34 felony counts of business fraud, a fact that has become one of Vice President Kamala Harris’ top arguments against a second Trump presidency.
The Garden is no stranger to political spectacles. It hosted the Republican National Convention in 2004 and the Democratic National Convention in 1924, 1976, 1980 and 1992.
The lineup for Sunday’s rally also included Mr. Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, billionaire Elon Musk, Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White, TV news host Tucker Carlson, and former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.
“This is where Republicans are not supposed to come, which is why Donald Trump came here,” Mr. Giuliani said. “There is no place in America where the president shouldn’t be able to come.”
“Donald Trump answered the question without a doubt as to who can lead us out of this morass of socialism, fascism, and communism that the Biden regime has put in,” he said.
Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democrat who recently registered as a Republican, decried her former party’s foreign policy, saying a “vote for Kamala Harris is a vote for Dick Cheney.”
“And it is a vote for war, more war, likely World War III and nuclear war,” Ms. Gabbard said. “A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for a man who wants to end wars, not start them.”
There was also a parade of conservative political personalities, celebrities and musicians.
Mr. Trump said he was making a play for New York and held a rally that drew 3,500 people in Crotona Park in the Bronx in late May. He also made a campaign stop at a Harlem bodega in April.
More recently, he rallied with supporters in Long Island last month at the Nassau Coliseum, where over 60,000 tickets were requested for the venue’s 16,000 seats. Those who could not be admitted watched Mr. Trump on giant screens outside.
The last Republican to win New York was President Ronald Reagan in his 1984 49-state landslide over Democrat Walter Mondale.
Although it is a long shot that New York will go Republican on Nov. 5, the rally may fire up GOP voters in the state, benefiting down-ballot Republicans in tight congressional races that are key to the party maintaining its House majority.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said people across the country are “fed up and fired up.”
“There is an energy out there that we have not seen before,” Mr. Johnson said. “I am convinced that in nine days, we are going to grow the House majority; we are going to take back the Senate and send Donald Trump back to the White House.”
• Seth McLaughlin reported from Delaware
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
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