Trump Sets Late October Rally at Madison Square Garden

Former President Donald J. Trump departs after speaking at Trump Tower in New York City on Sept. 26, 2024. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

Former President Donald Trump has set a rally for Oct. 27 at New York City’s Madison Square Garden.

A senior official with the Trump presidential campaign confirmed the date to The Epoch Times via text on Oct. 9 but provided no further details.

The rally is slated just nine days before the Nov. 5 presidential election pitting Trump against Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.

Madison Square Garden holds about 20,000 people and has hosted some of America’s most memorable events, ranging from the Joe Frazier-Muhammad Ali “Fight of the Century” in 1971 to the Billy Graham Crusades.

Trump has declared “a big play for New York,” even though the city is deep Democrat blue.

He has stated that he thinks he has a “good chance” of winning New York, the state where he lived much of his life before moving to Florida.

Still, analysts doubt President Trump can make up sufficient ground to win the state and turn it Republican “red.”

No Republican presidential candidate has scored a victory in New York since 1984, when President Ronald Reagan won reelection. And, Madison Square Garden has been the site of several Democratic National Conventions.

Jason Meister, a Trump advisory board member who works in New York, said,  “If anyone can forcefully and directly flip New York red, it’s Trump.”

Trump drew 7,000 to 10,000 people to Crotona Park in the Bronx when he held a rally there in May, city police told The Epoch Times.

“Holding a MAGA rally in Madison Square Garden is a show of force and a demonstration of dominance,” Meister said. “Gotham is known to be cutthroat and unforgiving. It’s not for the faint of heart.”

Trump, a native of Queens, rose to fame and fortune as a New York real estate mogul and star of the TV series “The Apprentice.”

“New York is where Trump got his instincts and guts, his stomach for taking on tremendous risk, and his ability to be a world-class negotiator,” Meister said. “Trump has always expressed himself like a true New Yorker; forcefully and directly.”

Many of the city’s luminaries and power brokers turned against Trump after the former Democrat ran as a Republican and won the presidency in 2016. Following his unsuccessful 2020 bid to retain the White House, Trump faced several criminal and civil prosecutions.

Last year, New York was the first of several jurisdictions to indict Trump on criminal charges; earlier this year, a Manhattan jury convicted him of dozens of records-falsification charges, a verdict Trump is appealing.