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Donald Trump made a defiant return on Sunday to the city where he made his fortune but was also convicted as a felon, filling New York’s Madison Square Garden for a lavish rally just nine days before the US presidential election.
A rapturous crowd greeted the Republican former president as he repeated core messages from his campaign against Democratic rival Kamala Harris, promising an economic “restoration” and a clampdown on the “migrant invasion of our country”.
“On issue after issue, Kamala broke it, but I will fix it,” Trump said as the crowd jeered at the Democratic candidate’s name. The insult-heavy event featured speakers who called Harris “the antichrist” and Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage”.
Supporters frequently interrupted Trump with chants of “we want you” and “we love you” as he mused that he might even win the knife-edge election by a big enough margin to turn New York, a solidly Democratic state, Republican.
Speaker after speaker, including billionaire backers Elon Musk and Howard Lutnick, presented Trump as the candidate of peace, prosperity and freedom. They attacked Harris in frequently harsh terms as a dangerous liberal who had failed to tame inflation or prevent the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
The message was often dark. Trump emphasised his anti-immigrant themes, repeated allegations that illegal migrants were responsible for rapes and murders across the country, accused the press of lying and warned that the opposition Democrats would cheat at the polls.
Grant Cardone, a property investor, claimed Harris and her “pimp handlers” would destroy the country, while talk-show host Tucker Carlson mocked the candidate’s ethnicity.
One warm-up comedian made a series of racist jokes about Puerto Rico, Latin Americans and other ethnic groups, which the Harris campaign immediately seized on.
The event marked an attention-grabbing return to the city, just five months after a New York jury found Trump guilty over the cover-up of a “hush money” payment to a porn actor.
Madison Square Garden, self-styled as the world’s most famous arena, has played host to Muhammad Ali, Pope John Paul II and Frank Sinatra.
But it has also hosted controversial political events including the German American Bund’s 1939 “pro-American rally”, in which Nazi armbands and swastikas were displayed in front of a giant portrait of George Washington.
Warm-up speakers made light of the notion that they were at a “Nazi rally” after Hillary Clinton, Trump’s defeated rival in 2016, this week accused him of seeking to “re-enact” that event.
A backdrop of screens in the arena told the crowd “Kamala is lying to you”, describing Harris as “weak, failed and dangerously liberal”. Signs handed to the audience read “Trump will fix it” and “dream big again”.
The rally also featured a rare speech by Melania Trump, the candidate’s wife.
Trump’s address in Manhattan, where he won less than 38 per cent of the vote in 2020, came at a point in the campaign where candidates typically focus all their efforts on a few swing states.
“This is where Republicans are not supposed to come, which is why Donald Trump came here,” said Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, who is facing criminal charges over alleged election interference in Georgia and Arizona in 2020, along with several civil cases.
The Financial Times poll tracker shows Trump and Harris in a statistical tie, with Harris narrowly ahead in national surveys and Trump marginally ahead in most swing states.
While Trump is not expected to beat Harris in New York, his campaign may be hoping to help nudge the fortunes of Republican candidates in a number of close congressional races in the state.
Mike Johnson, speaker of the House of Representatives, underlined the importance of down-ballot battles in New York.
“There’s an energy out there that I have not seen before,” Johnson told the crowd, predicting that congressional races in the state would help Republicans expand their majority in the lower chamber.
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