May 25, 2024
Former President Donald Trump held a rally in Crotona Park on Thursday evening. The event drew thousands of hardcore MAGA devotees as well as some simply curious New Yorkers and a much smaller number of protesters. Among the latter was a group of several dozen young New Yorkers who went on the record opposing both Trump and President Joseph Biden, the likely finalists in November’s general election.
Bronx Cheer: “F*ck Trump, F*ck Biden too! They Don’t Give A F*ck About You!”
Much of the conversation on social media and in news coverage has centered on dueling crowd size estimates. The Trump campaign claimed 30,000 while the NY Times reported (ahead of the rally) that a permit for 3,500 was issued, citing NYPD as their source. The Gazette estimated between 5,000 and 10,000 were present, not including a regiment of NYPD officers.
What the attendance controversy misses though is how irrelevant the number, whatever it may actually be, is to the campaign let alone to the election. The last time a Presidential candidate held a rally in this borough was in 2016 and the candidate was Senator Bernie Sanders. His rally in St. Mary’s Park, a couple of miles farther South in the South Bronx, drew an estimated 18,000 supporters. The Park was full to capacity, unlike Crotona Park on Thursday evening. Sanders went on to lose the NY Democratic Primary anyway, as did Senator Elizabeth Warren in 2019 after filling Washington Square Park with her supporters. Warren actually dropped out of the race before the Primary. Rally size is beside the point when an area historically delivers lopsided outcomes like Sanders’ 70-30 loss to Clinton in 2016 and Trump’s nearly identical 70-30 loss to Biden 4 years later.
Another strand of conversation and news coverage landed on demographics. The Bronx is roughly 80% Black and Latino and less than 10% White. Even allowing for overlapping identities, the reality is that the population of the Bronx is significantly different from Trump’s MAGA base of support. A visual inspection of the rally cohort confirmed that while there was indisputably representation of POC in the mix, the vast majority were White men, exactly what you’d expect to see at a Trump rally (see photo below).
People leaving the rally as Trump wraps up his speech.
The rally took place amid Trump’s criminal trial downtown on falsifying NY business records to violate election laws which is about to begin closing arguments ahead of jury deliberations. Should that lead to a guilty verdict it would be historic, to say the least, as Trump is not just a former President but also, he hopes, a future one. Leaning into the tough guy role, Trump has compared himself to Al Capone. On Thursday he invited rappers Sheff G and Sleepy Hallow onstage. The pair “were indicted last year as part of an investigation into a vast murder conspiracy by two Brooklyn gangs,” according to a NY Daily News report. It was an unusual choice for an ostensibly pro-police/law and order candidate to make, to say the least. Presumably it would be a major scandal if someone else, Biden for example, invited the same two men to a campaign event. And yet with Trump it hardly makes a ripple. Go figure.
The former President’s motorcade exits Crotona Park, Bronx, NY on May 23, 2023.