By james art 
Personal attacks increase in the final stretch before election day
As election days approach, Trump, Waltz and Obama are pulling no punches.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Sunday will use one of the biggest stages in the nation’s largest city to make one of his final shots in the tight race for the 2024 White House.
It’s a classic Trump move to stage a provocative campaign event in a venue billed as “The Most Famous Arena in the World” – Madison Square Garden. Also in classic Trump style, it’s a strategic decision that confounds seasoned political types who wonder why the former president would focus his limited time and resources as the clock ticks toward Election Day on Nov. 5 to travel to a seemingly safe Democratic state like New York.
Trump and his aides say there are good reasons to hold this rally on the penultimate weekend of the presidential campaign. His mastery of the media and his ability to attract eyeballs have always been key to his success – and a hallmark of his rise to fame starting in New York in the 1980s. It’s a key ingredient he wants to continue capturing in his race against Kamala Harris, who has brought new energy and her own wave of positive press since rising to the top of the Democratic ticket this summer following President Joe Biden’s decision to serve only one term.
“This is MSG, this is Madison Square Garden,” Trump recently told FOX News Radio’s “Brian Kilmeade Show,” adding, “It means a lot, those words, Madison Square Garden, right? Don’t you think so?’
Sunday’s rally comes after a steady stretch of events that have seen Trump return to the spotlight, from operating a stove and handing out meals last Saturday at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania to questioning Harris’ racial identity, spreading debunked claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets, making vicious threats about the “enemy within” and speaking out about Arnold Palmer’s genitalia during a visit to the dead golf legend’s hometown about an hour outside of Pittsburgh.
Those moves and more may have helped keep polling in the presidential campaign moving into the final stretch, even as they frustrated some in the GOP by distracting Trump from his main talking points on the economy and immigration. Now the Republican nominee is heading into one of his few remaining campaign days away from swing states, which has some political observers scrambling, even though his team says it’s a smart strategy to garner media attention that will spread across the country. country.
“It makes no strategic sense,” said Trump biographer Tim O’Brien, who wrote “Trump Nation: The Art of Being Donald.” He added: “It’s just King Kong climbing the Empire State Building again.”
A historic place for a historic election
Madison Square Garden—there have been four arenas of the same name in three different Manhattan sites since 1879—has long been a historic venue favored by artists and politicians. Trump will join former presidents such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon on the Garden playlist.
The current MSG, which opened in 1968, has hosted events ranging from the 1971 “Fight of the Century” between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier to political conventions that nominated Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush on the way to victories in the White House. It is the home of basketball’s New York Knicks and hockey’s New York Rangers.
The former garden also hosted a scandalous event that Trump’s critics highlighted in the run-up to Sunday. The German-American Bund, a pro-Nazi group, held a rally in the Garden in 1939, two years before the US entered World War II. The moment came in recent days after Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, said in an interview with the New York Times that the former president had said “more than once that ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too.'” accusations, the former president immediately rejected.
Ahead of the Madison Square Garden rally, Trump insists he is making a serious bid for New York state, which with its 28 Electoral College votes makes it the fourth-biggest prize for 2024 behind California (54), Texas (40) and Florida ( 30). ).
Harris has organized major media events herself, including Friday’s rally in Houston with cultural icons Beyoncé and Willie Nelson, which Democrats hope can help propel their Senate candidate Colin Allred to the ire of two-term Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. The Democratic presidential nominee is also planning an event on Tuesday at The Ellipse near the White House in Washington, the site of Trump’s rally that preceded the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.
But Trump aides also acknowledge that an upset in the Empire State is a long shot in the same way that California is Harris country and Texas and Florida are in the GOP camp. Instead, they described Sunday’s event as part of Trump’s ongoing effort to host media events that will garner national attention as they make their way to battleground states.
Trump has always sought creative ways to attract attention, from his descent down an escalator into the lobby of his eponymous Trump Tower before announcing his 2015 presidential campaign to last Sunday’s photo shoot at McDonald’s. In this cycle, he also caused a stir with his triumphant return to the place in Pennsylvania where he had been shot in the ear two months earlier by an attempted hitman.
“It’s all about the media,” said one aide, and in this case, “New York is the media capital of the world.”
In addition, his aides said that Trump is a native New Yorker and always wanted to be the main actor in the garden. He has attended the 19,500-seat arena regularly over the years and said in a recent interview that he saw Ali and Frazier fight there more than half a century ago, calling it “probably the greatest event.”
Not that all of Trump’s memories are pleasant. In 2019, then-President Trump heard boos when he entered the Garden for a UFC fight. Gwenda Blair, Trump’s longtime biographer, noted that the Garden was associated with rock stars, celebrities and fighters — playing into the larger-than-life image Trump cultivated.
“This image surrounds him — the whole combination of rock star and heavyweight champion,” said Blair, author of “The Trumps: Three Generations That Built an Empire.” She added: “Those things are so tangible in this and so much mentioned when you say Madison Square Garden. That in itself will be a virtual crowning of him as champion.”
Republican candidate in New York, California
Trump’s allies reject the idea that there is little or no strategic benefit to his rally in New York.
In addition to attracting national media attention, they note that this can help increase voter turnout for Republican Party candidates in the US. Trump will need a majority in Congress to help him carry out the second-term agenda he promised on the campaign trail, and there are three House races in New York that are considered to be swings, according to the nonpartisan handicapper The Cook Political Report, two with Republican incumbents and one with a Democrat.
The Republican presidential candidate is also organizing a fundraiser around the New York event to raise much-needed campaign cash. Harris raised $222 million in September through her primary campaign account, compared to Trump’s $63 million. These figures do not include other political committees that raise large sums to support each candidate.
Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Madison Square Garden would be a “high point” for Trump “because he’s really a New Yorker, he’s really excited.”
“People keep saying, ‘Well, shouldn’t it be in Wisconsin?’ Shouldn’t it be… no. Every day he’s everywhere because the TV covers him,” Gingrich added. “He’s going to get huge coverage at Madison Square Garden and he’s going to be happy and excited and the crowd is going to go crazy.”
Trump held a rally earlier this month in Coachella in California, another blue state he has little chance of winning.
“This tactic of entering an uncompetitive media market or state in the last week of an election is not a typical strategy, but he is not a typical candidate,” said Steve Kaplan, who teaches political advertising and communications at the University of Southern California and has worked for decades in the Democratic politics making media.
Kaplan added that the Madison Square Garden rally is a “great opportunity to get attention” but could also potentially turn off voters if it goes “off the rails.”
Harris’ campaign also has events planned outside of swing states. Her event in Texas on Friday with pop superstar Beyoncé highlighted the state’s restrictive abortion law as she makes abortion rights a centerpiece of her campaign. Trump organized a counter-programme event in Texas on the same day focused on immigration.
The rallies in New York and California in the last month of the election are not the only unorthodox part of Trump’s campaign strategy of late. He has also avoided traditional events, such as further debates after he faces Harris in Philadelphia on Sept. 10, and interviews in the mainstream media that are likely to be more confrontational, most notably with CBS’s “60 Minutes.”
Trump complained about the treatment he received from the major television networks and threatened to revoke their broadcast licenses. He has devoted more time to conservative and alternative media to try to fire up his base and reach casual voters.
As Trump has thrust himself more into the spotlight in recent weeks with provocative comments, Kaplan said he wonders if that’s the reason the polls are tightening.
“It’s a good place for him in his mind, to be the center of attention for the last two weeks and he’s very good at it. But has that specifically affected the race?” Kaplan said, pointing instead to a change in the paid media strategy the Trump campaign is pursuing.
Trump’s campaign turned to ads that focused heavily on attacking transgender people and gender-affirming care. That may have helped boost negative opinions of Harris after a period this summer when her approval ratings soared, Kaplan said.
At the same time, the campaign is trying to boost voter turnout among Trump supporters, and the Madison Square Garden rally could help with that.
“That’s the game,” Kaplan said, “It’s about mobilizing and motivating your voters.”
While New York may provide Trump with the biggest of national stages, it’s just one more stop in the final push to the Nov. 5 finish line. The Republican, who hopes to join Grover Cleveland as only the second president to win back-to-back terms in the White House, is returning to swing states with rallies scheduled for Tuesday night in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and Wednesday night in Green Bay, Wisconsin.