The Daily Escape:
We’re now in the homestretch of the presidential campaign, but in an unorthodox move, Trump plans on holding rallies in New York, Illinois, Colorado, and California, all of which are locks to vote for Harris. Biden won those states by an average of 20 points in 2020, with his 13-point Colorado win the closest margin. Colorado is the only one of those states to vote for a Republican nominee for president this millennium, backing George W. Bush in 2004.
Trump will still be spending most of his political advertising funds in the handful of battleground states where the races appear extremely tight, but the expectation is that the media will dutifully cover these rallies, giving him free publicity since it’s unusual to campaign where you don’t expect to win.
In the case of New York, Trump apparently will hold a rally in Madison Square Garden (MSG). The New York Post first reported that the event will take place Oct. 27, a little more than a week before Election Day. Why rallies in Blue states? Trump’s idea is to campaign in places where Democrats have near-complete control of government, and to take the opportunity of free media to highlight their supposed failures. Another consideration is that control of the House could be decided by a few close races in New York and California.
But with the battleground state races seemingly so tight, it seems like a bit of a luxury for Trump to be focused on helping down-ticket candidates. Think about it: None of the states where Trump is holding rallies has a competitive Senate race, although there are a handful of competitive House races in a year where the House will likely be decided by a razor-thin margin. From NBC: (brackets by Wrongo)
“In California, House District 40 is represented by Republican Young Kim, and House District 41 is represented by Republican Ken Calvert, both of whom are in contested races in the Los Angeles media market along with Coachella [CA], where Trump will be holding his rally.
In New York, Rep. Anthony D’Esposito won Nassau County’s 4th district in 2022, but it is a seat that leans Democratic and was won by Joe Biden by 15 points in 2020. Flipping the seat played a big role in helping Republicans take the House majority in 2022.”
Will the rallies be useful? People are already voting, and the primary value of rallies is to energize your base to help get out the vote. The more people they can get to vote early, the easier the Get Out The Vote (GOTV) effort on Election Day becomes. So little boosts of enthusiasm and local press coverage can help drive your people to the polls.
Is a rally in Madison Square Garden really a good idea? NBC quotes Republican operative Matthew Bartlett:
“This does not seem like a campaign putting their candidate in critical vote rich or swing vote locations — it seems more like a candidate who wants his campaign to put on rallies for optics and vibes…”
Two of his stops, Coachella, CA and Aurora, CO seem to be simply for optics about immigration and crimes committed by immigrants. Coachella Mayor Steven Hernandez, a Democrat, issued a statement blasting Trump:
“Trump’s attacks on immigrants, women, the LGBTQ community and the most vulnerable among us don’t align with the values of our community….He has consistently expressed disdain for the type of diversity that helps define Coachella.”
At Trump’s stop in Aurora earlier this year, he spread debunked rumors about Venezuelan gangs overrunning the city, including taking over an apartment complex. Trump’s claims have been refuted by local police, and the Republican Mayor Mike Coffman, who called them “not accurate.”
The Chicago stop will feature both Trump and his VP candidate JD Vance, at a Bloomberg-hosted event at the Economic Club of Chicago.
But let’s focus on MSG. Holding a rally at MSG has long been on Trump’s wish list. For some Conservatives, it harkens back to when the “America First” rally was conducted at MSG in 1939. On its surface, it was simply a rally held by the German-American Bund at the old Madison Square Garden in Manhattan at a time when pro-Nazi feeling was high in the US.
The Bund (bund is German for “organization”), was founded by German immigrant Fritz Kuhn in Buffalo in 1936. His vision was to create a pro-Nazi ideology within the US. Kuhn and his people used patriotic images of George Washington and the American flag to attract Americans of German descent as members. But the organization’s goals were wider: To create a “socially just, white gentile-ruled United States” and a “gentile-controlled labor union free from Jewish Moscow-directed domination.”
He sounds nice.
Tom Nichols, a Never Trump conservative who writes for the Atlantic, quotes from a Trump talk in Claremont, NH:
“We will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists, Marxists, fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country….On Veterans Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible…legally or illegally to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.”
The parallelism between a fascist speaking in MSG in 1939 and a would-be fascist speaking there 85 years later shouldn’t be lost on anyone who is sitting up and taking nourishment.
Time to face up to the truth. Trump is a wanna-be fascist, even if he’s too ignorant to label what he is. Others on the extreme Right have noticed and see the potential of using him for fascistic purposes.
Trump’s bringing fascism back to America one rally at a time, whether we call it by its name or not.
