By james art By Steve Holland and James Oliphant
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will headline a rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, creating a high-profile spectacle aimed at generating media buzz in a state he is likely to lose on Nov. 5.
US billionaire Elon Musk, who is backing Trump’s re-election bid with his social media platform X and vast wealth, will be among the featured speakers, the Trump campaign said.
Trump, a New York celebrity for decades, will use the event at the iconic venue known for Knicks games and Billy Joel concerts to make his closing argument against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
“We want to close it with a beautiful bang,” he said last week.
Polls show the rival candidates tied with just over a week until Election Day. More than 38 million votes have already been cast.
Trump is trying to tie Harris to the Biden administration’s handling of immigration and the economy. Last week, Trump debuted a new attack: “She broke it and I promise you I’m going to fix it.”
Harris will launch her own last-minute appeal to voters with a speech Tuesday on the National Mall in Washington, where she will try to draw a stark contrast between herself and Trump.
A Republican presidential candidate hasn’t won New York state since Ronald Reagan was re-elected in 1984. Democratic President Joe Biden won the state by 23 percentage points in 2020, and a Siena College poll this week found Harris leading Trump by 19 points, 58% to 39%.
But Trump, who held a rally in Long Island, N.Y., in September, said he was playing for the state.
“SHOW OF FORCE”
By staging the attention-grabbing event in the world’s largest media market, Trump could help boost Republican candidates in New York’s congressional race. The state has seven competitive seats that could help determine whether the party holds on to the U.S. House of Representatives next year.
It could also give Trump a boost in nearby northeastern Pennsylvania, a battleground state that has increasingly become home to New York commuters.
The Trump campaign said the event at the 19,500-seat arena, which could cost more than $1 million to rent, is sold out.
“This is an attempt by Trump to dominate the headlines in the final days of the election,” said Republican strategist Ryan Williams. “He has a flair for the dramatic. I think he wants to show strength in a stadium full of people.”
A crowd of about 30,000 attended Harris’ rally with superstar singer Beyoncé on Friday night in Houston.
Trump’s 2016 presidential opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, accused him of “reproducing” a pro-Nazi rally that took place in the Garden in 1939 on the eve of World War II. Trump’s critics have long accused him of empowering white supremacists through his dehumanizing and racist rhetoric.
Her comments drew rebukes from Trump and Republican leaders.
“She said it was just like the 1930s. No, it’s not,” Trump said at a rally in Michigan on Friday. “It’s called Making America Great Again, that’s all.”
Republicans Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House of Representatives, and Mitch McConnell, the minority leader of the Senate, issued a joint statement saying Clinton’s rhetoric “risks inviting another potential assassin” to target Trump and “endangers ” the lives of Americans.
Other speakers at Sunday’s event included Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the former independent presidential candidate who dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump, conservative commentator Tucker Carlson and Howard Lutnick, who is chairman and CEO of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald and co-chairman of Trump’s White House transition team.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla (NASDAQ: ) and SpaceX and owner of X, has traveled around Pennsylvania on Trump’s behalf and given $119 million to his pro-Trump finance group, which helps voters in the most contested states.
The America PAC group is also giving away $1 million a day to randomly selected registered voters in battleground states who sign its online petition. The Justice Department sent a letter to America PAC warning that the gifts may be in violation of federal law, CNN reported.