There is no greater democrat fiefdom in the democrat NY that he Bronx, a neighborhood where approximately 56% of residents are Hispanic and 28% black and where about 35% live below the poverty line. Perhaps that’s why no Republican presidential candidate had bothered to come forward to offer a rally since I did it in the summer of 1980 Ronald Reagan, the last conservative to win here. But the drought ended this Thursday.
In it Crotona park Donald Trump offered a rally before several thousand people. They were not even close to the 25,000 that his campaign claimed had turned out. There were probably not even 10,000 of them and there was plenty of space once they had passed the security checks. And they were also received by several protest events in which a couple of hundred people participated, including some Democratic politicians and union leaders.
It was, in any case, a significant attendance for New York. Trump managed to gather a pmuch more racially diverse public than the one usually seen at his rallies. And in the Bronx, where in 2016 he did not obtain 10% of the votes and in 2020 he raised that support to 16%, the candidate who in the last six weeks has had to return to the city that he has changed for Florida to submit to a historic criminal trial, tried to support progress which the polls show is now reaping between blacks and Latinos.
According to a March poll by ‘The New York Times’ and Sienna College, he would obtain a 46% support among Hispanics and 23% among blacks, well above the 32% and 12% he obtained respectively among those groups in 2020. And any vote he wins can be decisive, especially in pivotal states.
a courtship
Both are sectors of the population that Trump is courting in his speeches. He portrays them as victims accentuated costs of inflation. Also, as those most harmed by Biden’s policy that he denounces as “open border” and the arrival of undocumented immigrants to whom, as he said this Thursday, “our black and Hispanic population is losing their jobs, their housing and everything they can lose.”
In a sanctuary city and in a neighborhood with strong migrant roots, Trump was applauded and cheered when he promised “the largest deportation operation in history” from the United States or when he insinuated that those who are arriving “They are forming an army (…) They want to destroy us from within”.
“He knows he has people here”
“He’s back home, he knows He has people here, look how many of us have come”, said Jay M., a 38-year-old New Yorker with roots in Puerto Rico and Italy, in the serpentine queue to enter the park. “You will find many people who supported Barack Obama but who have woken up. Latinos have seen what communism, socialism, does. And the four years of Trump’s presidency, except for the downturn caused by the pandemic, showed what he can do, & rdquor ;, he said.
Republicans in New York do not always express their support for Trump as openly as they did this Thursday in Crotona, a sea of red caps, t-shirts, flags and all kinds of clothing and accessories that shouted adoration for the Republican from the four winds.
Antonio, a young black man from Brooklyn who was initially encouraged by his fiancee not to give his real name, said that “Normally in New York you get used to not speaking publicly about your support for Trump because you have to worry”. Owner of a painting business, he claimed that in 2020, when his rejection of the Covid 19 vaccine made him pay more attention to the Republican and get closer to him politically, he began to share that support on social networks and suffered “retaliation”. “There were clients who stopped their business immediately, others who stopped recommending my services, arguments with friends and family…,” he stated.
Now, however, more black like him they approach Trump and Antonio thinks he knows why. “Those who carry 80 or 100 years voting Democrat they still have the same problems. And the big Democratic cities governed by Democrats like Detroit, Philadelphia or Baltimore have failed, there is nothing but poverty.”
“In 2016 I thought Trump was racist “But I changed,” said Robi, a 25-year-old black nurse with Dominican roots. “I compared what he said with what the media They said what he was saying and I saw that they distorted their words or took phrases out of context. “I don’t care about her personality,” she continued. “One is tired of how Biden takes money and sends it to wars. “Trump wants peace.”
It was not possible to find anyone who identified Trump as the threat to democracy which Biden warns he represents. No one who said he had any rresponsibility in the assault on the Capitol. Or anyone who gave importance to four criminal cases that he faces and that he did not speak, as Trump himself does, of a “political persecution in which Biden is using the Department of Justice.”
After more than an hour and a half of speech, Trump assured that he had considered whether he would find hostility or a good reception in the Bronx. “It has been more than friendly,” he concluded, “it has been a love festival”.
