Source: Chris Unger / Getty
Donald Trump announced a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden, compelling some to compare it to an infamous Nazi rally once held there.
On Wednesday (Oct. 9), an official with former President Donald Trump’s election campaign confirmed that they would be holding a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City. News of the rally immediately sparked comparisons to an infamous rally held by a group sympathetic to the Nazi Regime in Germany in 1939. According to reports, the campaign event will be held on Oct. 27, and “will kick off an ‘arena tour’ for the former president who plans to visit battleground states in the final push before the Nov. 5 election,” reportedly including Coachella in Palm Springs, California.
Trump teased the possibility of a rally at the vaunted arena in April. “We’re going to be doing a rally at Madison Square Garden, we believe,” he said at the time. “We think we’re signing Madison Square Garden to do. We’re going to have a big rally honoring the police, and honoring the firemen, and everybody. Honoring a lot of people, including teachers by the way. We’ll be honoring the people that make New York work.” At his campaign rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday evening, he announced it to the crowd who met the news with cheers. “We’re going to make a play for New York,” he said.
Observers noted that the rally’s theme of “America First” bears a striking resemblance to the rally held at the former Madison Square Garden on Feb. 20, 1939, by the German American Bund. The rally featured attendees cheering on “speeches were explicitly anti-Semitic, and tirades against ‘job-taking Jewish refugees’ were met with thunderous applause.” It would be the subject of a PBS short film released in 2020, A Night at the Garden, which captured the event. Others questioned Trump’s decision to have a rally in a state that hasn’t gone for a Republican since Ronald Reagan.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, historian Michael Beschloss shared an image from that 1939 event featuring a banner of George Washington next to a banner bearing the Nazi swastika in response to the news. In another X post, New York State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal called on Madison Square Garden to cancel, feeling their approval for the rally was a decision “that will endanger the public safety of New Yorkers and has the potential to incite widespread violence.”
This is a disastrous decision by Madison Square Garden that will endanger the public safety of New Yorkers and has the potential to incite widespread violence.
For the good of NYC and its residents, I demand @TheGarden keep our city safe by cancelling the Trump rally 3/3
— Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal (@bradhoylman) October 9, 2024
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