Donald Trump is kicking off the final full week of the presidential race Sunday with a rally at Madison Square Garden, betting on his own showmanship as he seeks to fill the iconic venue and create a spectacle that will reach television and phone screens in all seven battleground states.
The former president is returning to his hometown of New York City – deep-blue turf that virtually no Republicans expect to win, but where signs of discontent and state and local Democratic leadership struggles could help endangered GOP incumbents hold House seats in the surrounding suburbs.
It’s the latest in a line of Trump visits to blue states that has also included a rally in California’s Coachella Valley this month, one on Long Island in the summer and a recent stop for an economic forum in Chicago.
At each stop, in dehumanizing terms, Trump is laying the blame for crime and growing numbers of migrants at the feet of his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I will rescue every town across America that has been invaded and conquered,” he said Thursday in Las Vegas.
The Madison Square Garden event follows a precedent set by campaigns past. The venue, including its earlier locations, boasts an extensive political history. It has hosted presidents such as Grover Cleveland, Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and has welcomed both Republican and Democratic national conventions – most recently the GOP confab in 2004. It was also famously the site of John F. Kennedy’s birthday celebration in 1962, when Marilyn Monroe performed her iconic serenade for the president.
