At a campaign rally in the Bronx, Trump aims to connect with Hispanic and African American voters.
A rally scheduled to take place in one of the most Democratic counties of the country is set to occur just before the closing arguments in Trump's New York criminal trial. Trump, who is facing 34 felony counts, has pleaded not guilty. This event will be Trump's first major campaign rally in the state since his initial presidential run in 2016.
The trial has tied Trump to New York for most of the past six weeks, but the rally at Cortona Park in the South Bronx will be his first major one in the state since then. Trump has visited a bodega where a fatal stabbing occurred in 2022, a construction site, and a fire station in Manhattan since his trial began in mid-April.
An official from Trump's campaign told CNN that several factors, including his long history of living and working in New York, his efforts to win over minority voters, the proximity of the trial to the rally, and his desire to "challenge the status quo" in the state, played into the decision to hold the rally.
Trump believes he has a chance of winning New York this fall, a feat not achieved by a Republican presidential nominee since 1984. The Bronx, where the rally is taking place, is a Democrat stronghold, which he lost by about 68 points to Joe Biden in 2020. However, this was a decrease from 2016, when Hillary Clinton carried the county by 79 points. The majority of residents in the South Bronx, the location of the rally, are Hispanic (64%) and Black (31%), according to the US Census Bureau.
The Biden campaign released two new ads on Thursday, aiming to highlight what they called "Trump's long record of failures and broken promises" to Black Americans. These ads mention Trump's history of housing discrimination in the 1970s, his promotion of the racist conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama was not born in the US, his push for the death penalty for five minority teenagers wrongly accused and convicted of beating and raping a woman in Central Park in the 1980s, and his support for violent White supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ritchie Torres, who represent parts of the Bronx, slammed the former president's upcoming event. Ocasio-Cortez called it "an attempt to, I think, trick some of our folks here," while Torres said Trump was "radioactive" in the Bronx.
Trump's efforts to reach out to minority voters also come as he has made stoking fears about undocumented migrants a central part of his campaign. He has repeatedly made false or misleading claims about illegal immigration and used dehumanizing language when referring to migrants.
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Trump is hoping to engage with Hispanic and African American voters at the rally, leveraging his historical connections to New York and his intent to challenge the state's established politics.The former president's campaign has chosen the Bronx, a predominantly Hispanic and Black neighborhood, as the location for the rally, acknowledging the population demographics that could potentially impact his electoral prospects.
Source: edition.cnn.com
