By UNIONDALE, N.Y. — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump insisted a rally here on Wednesday was more than an add-on for a fundraising swing: He’s serious about winning the state of his birth, which has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1984.
He made similar promises in 2016 and 2020, going on to lose by more than 20 points both times. This year, Trump pressured aides to make a real play in deep-blue territory, especially as President Joe Biden struggled in polls. That aspiration hasn’t dimmed as Vice President Kamala Harris replaced Biden on the Democratic ticket and quickly tightened up the race.
Trump has long staked far-fetched claims to winning unlikely states, often relying on unsubstantiated and unspecified allegations of fraud. “If I ran with an honest vote counter in California, I would win California,” he said at a news conference in Los Angeles on Friday.
The former president mocked his doubters from the stage here Wednesday. “When I told some people in Washington, ‘I’m going up to New York, we’re doing a campaign speech,’ they said, ‘What do you mean, New York? You can’t ever — nobody can win. Republicans can’t win,’” Trump recounted to the cheering fans nearly filling a 16,000-seat arena.
“I said, ‘I can win New York, and we can win New York.’ We’re going to win,” he said.
Election analysts do not regard New York as a competitive state. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates it as a “Solid D,” the same category as solidly blue states such as California and New Jersey, two others where Trump has held campaign events this cycle.
While the Empire State is not an electoral college battleground, it does have competitive U.S. House districts, including for Republican incumbents trying to shore up GOP voters who are skeptical of Trump, putting them in an awkward position for Wednesday’s rally. Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (N.Y.), one of the most vulnerable House Republicans, attended as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee put out a statement saying the incumbent was “guaranteeing his pink slip come November.” The Democratic challenger to Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), who represents a redder area, quickly drew attention to his attendance as well.
Trump thanked vulnerable Rep. Marcus J. Molinaro (R-N.Y.) and Alison Esposito, who faces an uphill battle to unseat Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.)
“New York is sending Donald Trump back with a Republican Congress to work with,” former congressman Lee Zeldin said in one of the warm-up speeches before Trump. “New York was a battleground in 2022, and New York is a battleground again in 2024.”
The Long Island setting — not far from where Trump grew up in Queens — also fit Trump’s campaign themes of portraying himself as a champion for working people concerned about crime and immigration.
To bolster that mantle, Trump cited surveys released Wednesday showing rank-and-file support in the Teamsters union, prompting its leadership to refrain from endorsing the Democrat for the first time since 1996. Trump cited that to claim the membership sided with him. Some local chapters endorsed Harris, including the one on Long Island.
He described the state as crime-ridden, ravaged by terrorists and criminals, and akin to a “third-world nation,” sometimes speaking in exaggerated terms and asking the audience, “What do you have to lose?” At the sound of that phrase, he went on to defend using it in his 2016 pitch to Black voters, describing them as having “the worst housing conditions, the worst education, the worst this, the worst that, the most crime.” He recounted how the remark was widely viewed as offensive, but he stood by it and pointed to more recent polls showing gains with Black voters, who still overwhelmingly support Democrats.
Elsewhere in the speech, Trump brushed off criticism for dehumanizing migrants, repeating his insistence on calling foreign gang members “animals” and warning of an “invasion.” He said he would visit Springfield, Ohio, and Aurora, Colo., two cities with immigrant communities that he and allies have falsely smeared.
“You got to get rid of these people,” Trump said, alluding to his pledge for mass deportations.
Trump also used the rally to recount Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt, calling the gunman a “radical left mobster.” Investigators have not released a motive for the suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, who has an extensive criminal record and spent recent years trying to join the war in Ukraine.
Without evidence about the shooter’s motive, Trump and his campaign have blamed the potential assassination attempt on Democrats’s claims that Trump poses a threat to American democracy because he would govern as a dictator, rejecting election results and tolerating violence. On Wednesday, Trump called on his opponents to stop using such language about him in the same breath as turning the same words back on them.
“Stop claiming your opponents will turn America into a dictatorship,” he said. “Give me a break. Because the fact is that I’m not a threat to democracy. They are.”
Trump repeated misrepresentations about Harris’s record, including blaming her for crime recategorizations that were approved by California voters and misleadingly suggesting that migrant children who haven’t been summoned to immigration court have all been lost to sex trafficking or death.
New York is also home to a wealth of donors, and Trump fundraised during his visit and held other meetings, according to a Trump official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the trip.
Trump supporters filled the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, an arena meant for up to 16,000 people. Many others were turned away outside.
“NEW YORK IS TRUMP COUNTRY,” screens in the arena declared, as Trump took the stage.
In the concessions line, a group of teenagers emphatically agreed that it was hard to be a Trump supporter in New York. One said he got pushback when he wore his Trump hat to high school. Another said his mom was a “huge liberal” but that he came to support Trump after doing his “own research.”
Andy Alem, 40, of Huntington, N.Y., was waiting just behind and told the teenagers he was impressed with them. They talked for a while about Biden — “the engine’s running, but no one’s behind it!” Alem said — and how the kids’ school now had a gender-neutral bathroom and a “homecoming court” rather than a “king” and “queen.”
Alem said he liked Trump’s New York attitude. “You’re tough when you need to,” he said.
Arnsdorf reported from Washington. Marianne LeVine in Uniondale contributed to this report.
