Donald Trump, the former president and current Republican presidential nominee, is planning a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden in late October.
The Oct. 27 rally at the “World’s Most Famous Arena,” according to NBC New York, kicks off what the Trump campaign described as an “arena tour” in the waning days of the presidential campaign. The event is scheduled a day after early voting begins in the Empire State in the Nov. 5 general election.
A most recent poll had Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, leading Trump by a significant number in New York state. No Republican presidential nominee has won New York since President Ronald Reagan did in 1984. Yet Trump has maintained the Big Apple is within reach for him, and last month, held a campaign rally in Nassau County to try to court voters there.
While Nassau County has been friendly territory for Republicans in recent years, Madison Square Garden is located in solidly blue Manhattan, where Democrats outnumber Republicans by an 8-1 margin.
One local lawmaker, state Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, a Democrat, expressed his displeasure at Trump’s scheduled MSG rally, comparing it to a more infamous moment at a prior version of the Garden in 1939 — when the German-American Bund, a Nazi sympathizer group, held a rally before 20,000 people.
“Let’s be clear. Allowing Trump to hold an event at MSG is equivalent to the infamous Nazis rally at Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939,” Hoylman-Sigal posted on X (formerly Twitter). “This is a disastrous decision by Madison Square Garden that will endanger the public safety of New Yorkers and has the potential to incite widespread violence.”
Hoylman-Sigal called on MSG management to scrap the rally.
