Former President Donald Trump held a rally in the South Bronx on Thursday that drew large crowds of supporters, but despite Democrats’ efforts to encourage support, a planned protest failed to materialize.
Fox News anchor Rosanna Scoto said that Democrat organizers had reached out to the media in an effort to drum up support for a protest. While the number of people who attended the rally is in question, Trump supporters vastly outnumbered the protesters, as seen in photographs posted to social media and reported on by RedState.
Estimates range from a few thousand Trump supporters attending the rally to as many as 30,000, according to Newsweek. CNN reporters were surprised to find so many supporters from the Bronx, a neighborhood considered to be one of the bluest in New York, if not the country.
“Certainly a bigger crowd than I think Democrats would like to see,” CNN’s Kristen Holmes told Anderson Cooper, as reported by Fox News. “I wasn’t sure what to expect. I have been to lots of these rallies across the country, and there are often people who travel hundreds of miles to see Donald Trump. However, one of the things that I found is that there were a lot of people here that are actually from the Bronx.”
Holmes noted that she had spoken with voters outside the rally who had voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 but were unhappy with the economy and were considering supporting Trump in 2024.
The crowd appeared to be racially diverse, indicative of an effort by the Trump campaign to reach out to more minority voters. During his speech, Trump said that if elected, he would work with New York’s Democratic leaders to improve the city and the state.
The gesture of bipartisanship was not shared by some New York leaders, including Gov. Kathy Hochul.
“Well, I’ll tell you what won’t make a difference at all, Jake, and that’s for Donald Trump to be a ringleader and invite all his clowns to a place like the Bronx,” Hochul told CNN’s Jake Tapper before the rally, Fox News reported. “New York will never, ever support Donald Trump for president.”
Others took shots at Trump by accusing him of racial bias.
“He’s trying to signal to other people, signal to people in swing states who are white, who don’t want to be thought of as voting for a racist, to soften the ground and say, ‘Maybe he’s not a racist’ and also to shave off a couple of points among blacks and Hispanic who say ‘I don’t want to vote for a racist,’” MSNBC political analyst Charles Blow said. “They say, ‘Maybe he’s not as racist as they say he is.’ This is signaling to other people. Has nothing to do with New York, has nothing to do with the Bronx.”
Trump won less than 10% of the vote in 2016 and just 16% in 2020 in the Bronx, but a recent poll indicates his support across New York is increasing. President Joe Biden still leads Trump in the deeply blue state, but his support has slipped from 47% to 38%.
