By Paul Bean
I attended the Trump rally on Sunday at Madison Square Garden in New York City and I am at a loss for words.
But I’m a reporter, so here goes…..
Watching how the mainstream media has reported on the event has been genuinely eye opening and sad. MSNBC compared it to a Nazi rally hosted there in the 1930s, the New York Times calling it “A Closing Carnival of Grievances and Racism, CNN saying “Trump loyalists spew racist, vulgar attacks at Harris and Democrats at New York City rally, and CBS writing “Trump rally at Madison Square Garden features offensive, crude commentary,” which is if anything the most accurate but still false.
Having never been to a Trump rally (nor any kind of major political rally) I did not really know what to expect. On Sunday Oct 27, I was up at 5 am and on the road. On my way I listened to Donald Trump on Joe Rogan which was of course very “on theme” before seeing MAGA in person. Between the Rogan interview and the MAGA rally my opinion of Trump and his supporters have changed immensely.
As a teen, I “hated” Trump, but had no idea what I was talking about. It was all just based on what pretty much everyone else around me was saying, what I was being taught in Vermont public schools and what I saw on the TV. What I had in my mind about him and his supporters is that they were brash, rude, racist, inflammatory person, and I was surprised by how much I was still holding on to those sentiments about him prior to attending this rally. My perspective of Trump and MAGA was still today slightly poisoned by a media narrative that we have been conditioned by for the past 10 years.
Trump, and his supporters, are not racist. In fact they are some of the least racist people on the planet. “I have never felt more welcomed in my life,” said Mohit, an Indian born gentleman who I met while waiting in line. “Everything the media says about Trump and his supporters being racist is a complete lie. Look around us right now, there are people of all walks of life.”
Looking around the crowd we saw all kinds of Trump supporters. I spoke with Chinese Catholics that love Trump. I chatted with black men from the Bronx who support him and are actively hoping he will flip NY. Despite the endless fake news claims that “Trump is Hitler” I saw literally thousands of Jewish people and many of them wearing “Jewish voices for Trump” merch.
For even me, these sights are eye opening.
While the media is literally freaking out about a single comment Tony Hinchcliffe made, he is a comedian and made many more jokes like it. Maybe instead of watching a single clip of the event, go and watch everything he said… And notice the media doesn’t talk about any of the other speakers that were in attendance, just the one white dude who made a funny joke.
Speakers included a diverse mix of races including, former Presidential candidate and Indian American, Vivek Ramaswamy, former Congresswoman and Hawaiian, Tulsi Gabbard, and Death Row records CEO Micheal Harris, who is black.
Look I don’t mean to make this a game of naming off races, but it needs to be pointed out just how diverse the group of speakers were as well as the supporters there in NYC. This cast of characters was not some forced diversity and equity mandate either, it was a serendipitous grouping that was created naturally and you could tell. The speaker’s list was a star studded cast. Some people I admire greatly, Bobby Kennedy Jr, Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Dana White, Rudi Guliani, and JD Vance.
“I saw the Grateful Dead in this arena in 1987, I was seated right there…how weird,” said Tucker Carlson as he took the stage at MSG. “It’s such an honor to be here, and it’s wild. Just another day following Bobby Kennedy Jr at a Donald Trump rally in Madison Square Garden..HAHAH I mean what? It’s totally normal. Liz Cheney’s out there with Kamala Harris and there’s Bobby Kennedy calling to protect women’s sports at a Trump rally. It’s a realignment.”
That is exactly what it is. A realignment of truth, diversity, merit, and of the Republican party as a whole. Today’s democratic party is the party of hate, war, big pharma, corporations, corporate media, manufactured division, and incompetence. It is a party that is based around lies. The Democratic party literally does not even have a real platform this year, it is all “orange man=bad.”
Admittedly, I did not make it into the arena. We were literally at the gate when they cut off attendance. Only about 20,000 people got in, meanwhile around 200,000 people rallied around the building. While I was a little upset, it didn’t really matter. From where we were we could hear clearly the crowd inside and we could hear the speakers outside the arena. It was a site to see outside the arena, mind you. There were way more people outside. The streets of New York City flooded with red MAGA hats and shouts of USA, USA, USA echoed off the skyline around us.
The talk the whole time was about the potential of New York potentially flipping for Trump. “I had a friend of mine, a smart guy. He’s a billionaire, texted me this morning,” Vivek Ramaswamy said during the rally. “And he said, ‘Why the hell are you guys wasting your time in New York City instead of going to a swing state?’ You want to know what I told him? I said, ‘Welcome to 2024. New York is a swing state’.”
While winning New York might be far fetched for some to believe, the last Republican President to win in NY was Ronald Reagan, who was also the most recent republican nominee to spend a significant amount of time campaigning in New York City.
With one week to go in this election season, I am thankful I was able to make it to a rally in New York City in Trump’s hometown and to see him and his creation of MAGA in the city he came from. Trump has been very clear, win or lose, this is it. This was like seeing Derek Jeter in his final game at Yankee Stadium….like Sinatra’s final performance in NYC. While I didn’t make it actually inside the building, we were there, we were part of it, and it was nothing short of historic.