The Best Part of Trump’s New York Rally
My September 18, 2024 Dean's List Editorial
I heard so many negative things about Trump’s rally in Flint, Michigan, that I decided to watch his rally in Uniondale, New York, this morning. I thought I knew what to expect, but there were a few surprises. There were also six minutes of entertainment preceding Donald Trump’s roughly 90-minute speech.
I am sharing the editorial here. It captures, at least to me, where the Trump campaign is heading. After watching the New York event, I have concluded that predictions that the Trump campaign will crash and burn in the next few weeks are wrong-headed. Like Trump or hate him, his campaign will continue to the end.
Here’s the editorial:
2024 Election, Trump
The Best Part of Trump’s New York Rally
I watched the man in the yellow hat and the rest of the event.
In recent days, in between reading about the second assassination attempt targeting Trump and exploding pagers in Lebanon, I kept hearing that Donald Trump’s journey off the rails was accelerating. He announced involvement in a cryptocurrency exchange that immediately raised the question of what would happen if he won in November. Trump made dozens of gaffes and misstatements at an event in Flint, Michigan, where he was described as so bad and so repetitive that attendees started leaving in droves before he finished his speech. The news was confusing. If Trump is “losing it,” why is the presidential race so close?
Despite the sight of Trump disgusting me, I decided to watch his rally held on September 18 on Long Island. I wondered why Trump would hold an event in a state he is guaranteed to lose in November. And while Long Island is a Republican stronghold in a blue state, would Trump be able to draw a crowd? And would attendees be enthusiastic about a candidate who describes their state as “a mess.”
The video is on YouTube. I recommend you watch it yourself, but don’t skip the first six minutes of the tape. The camera focused on the crowd waiting for Trump to enter. Elton John’s “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” played. What a curious choice by the Trump campaign. If the campaign was seeking to evoke an emotion, what was it? Who’s funeral?
The tape shows an attendee in a yellow cap captivated by the music while almost everyone else seems to ignore it. The yellow-capped man plays an air guitar and occasionally an air piano while dancing in one of the aisles. Various attendees ignore him even when the man starts singing the lyrics along with Elton John.
Ordinarily, I fast forward through the preliminaries to any speech, especially one about an hour and a half long. I watched the whole performance. And so should you.
The crowd enthusiastically greeted Trump’s arrival onstage, but I saw no “Blacks for Trump” signs.
Here are a few of the notable things Trump said:
We are going to win New York.
Nobody in the audience laughed at this ridiculous prediction.
After saying Harris was the most liberal senator, Trump referred to Senator Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas.” I had not heard that recently.
Trump acknowledged the “fake media” covering the rally and added:
We got to get our media back in this country. We got to get them back.
Trump did not say how “we” would get our media back, nor elaborate on why we needed to get them back or what “back” meant.
As is standard in his speeches, Trump called for the end of “lawfare” and the “fake lawsuits” against him. He did not discuss any pending indictments against him or his pending sentencing hearing, which will occur after the election.
The predominant theme of the night was immigration. Trump boldly told the audience:
America has become a third-world country, something nobody thought was possible.
The crowd did not boo the statement or cheer it. I was surprised at the absence of a reaction. I guess people have heard Trump’s gloomy vision of America so often that they are numb to it.
Inevitably, Trump spoke about the second assassination attempt. He told the crowd:
God has now spared my life. It must have been God.
We are going to bring back religion into our country.
After repeating his promise to win New York, Trump promised lower taxes, lower crime, and “lower stress.” Trump did not say how he would do that or what the “stress” consisted of.
Because recent polls show Harris narrowing the gap or leading in several battleground states, Trump addressed recent polls and told the crowd that “the Rassmussen poll “was the most accurate and their most recent poll shows him to be “five up.”
Trump told attendees, “We’re the party of common sense.” I expect to hear this slogan more often during the remaining five weeks of the campaign.
Trump repeatedly returned to the subject of crime, which he tied directly to “illegal aliens.” During one such discussion, he said he regularly rode the New York subway as a child, and his parents never worried about his safety. He added, "If you put your child on the subway today, you have a 75 percent chance you will never see your child again.”
As expected, Trump referenced the “Kamala crime wave.”
Trump promised to take “violent criminals back to the country from which they came.” Trump is not shy about promising mass deportation.
Trump claimed to have sent back “thousands and thousands and thousands of MS-13 members” after forcing countries to accept their return by threatening them with cutting off U.S. aid. Trump said that after the countries started accepting returnees, he still did not restore the aid.
He discussed his efforts to eradicate the MS-13 gang during his term in the White House and promised to fight MS-13 again if elected. Trump added:
When I get back to the Oval Office, law and order is going to return to our country.
President Obama’s name came up during the speech: “Barack Husein Obama.”
Trump urged people to vote:
The gun owners have to get out to vote.
The evangelicals have to vote.
Get Harry off his fat ass and get him to vote for Trump.
Trump discussed the “Trump Reciprocal Trade Act,” which would tax imports to the same extent the exporting country taxes American products.
Interestingly, Trump promised to cap credit card interest rates at 10 percent. The crowd applauded.
Trump told attendees that the term “global warming “is no longer used because “it is getting cooler.” It has “been replaced” by “Climate Change.” He then referred to the “Green New Deal” as “the New Green Scam” and promised to take the money appropriated to address climate change and use it to build bridges and other infrastructure and pay down debt.
There was little discussion of foreign policy. The most notable claims were:
A vote for Kamala Harris is a vote to obliterate Israel.
The October 7 attack would never have occurred if I were president.
Trump also promised to keep Critical Race Theory out of schools and to keep men out of women’s sports.
Overall assessment.
Trump was more coherent than I expected but also more overtly racist as he merged the issues of crime and illegal immigration. He seemed to enjoy himself, undoubtedly pleased at the size of the crowd, 19,000.
At no point did the video show anyone leaving early.
Notwithstanding the media's suggestion that Trump is tanking his campaign by focusing excessively on personal grievances, Trump talked more about issues than I expected, especially immigration.
© 2024 John Dean, all rights reserved.