Trump plans audacious Bronx rally but congressman says his borough won't be fooled

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Trump visits NYC bodega, blasts trial

Former President Donald Trump visited a NYC bodega after the second day of his hush money trial. (Credit: Reuters)

Deep blue New York is in play.

In a major throwdown to Democrats, former President Trump will host a campaign rally in the Bronx on Thursday as he sets his sights on flipping the Empire State red this November, a situation that would have been unfathomable in 2021 when he departed the White House.

Trump’s campaign announced Friday night that Thursday’s rally will take place at 6 p.m. in Crotona Park, a 127-acre public park just blocks away from the boundary line of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s district. The New York Post reports that the campaign has a permit to fit 3,500 people into the space. 

The move comes on the heels of a record-breaking Trump rally that brought up to 100,000 supporters together in the Democratic stronghold of New Jersey last week. 

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President Trump speaking and Rep. Ritchie John Torres, who said Bronx residents won't be fooled by Trump. (Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images)

It will mark Trump’s first rally in the state since an upstate Buffalo event in 2016. Biden topped Trump with 76% of the city's vote in the 2020 election. Statewide, Biden took 60.87% of the vote.

In announcing the rally, Trump’s campaign took several swipes at President Biden’s record over the last three and a half years in relation to crime and inflation.

"Both New York City and the state at large have been ravaged by monumental surges in violent crime as a direct result of Biden’s and Democrats’ pro-criminal policies," the campaign said in the announcement. "Murders in New York City are up 23.1 percent from 2019 levels, while felony assault is up 35.4 percent. These upticks are incomprehensible and devastating."

The campaign highlighted Trump’s fondness of the state he once called home until he switched his permanent residence to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida in 2019. Although he has been forced back to stand trial in his "hush money" case and his defamation case with E Jean Carroll.

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A billboard at a Trump rally in Wildwood declaring historical blue New Jersey is "Trump Country." The rally is understood to have drawn nearly 100,000 people. (The Image Direct for Fox News Digital)

"The Empire State, a place near to President Trump’s heart, has been decimated by Biden," the statement continues. "President Trump will ease the financial pressures placed on households and re-establish law and order in New York! We can Make America Great Again by tackling lawlessness head-on, ceasing the endless flow of illegal immigrants across our southern border, and reversing the detrimental effects of inflation by restoring people’s wealth."

The rally announcement has been met with mixed responses. 

Rep. Ritchie John Torres, a Democrat who represents New York's 15th Congressional District, where the rally is being held, blasted the former president in a statement to Fox News Digital.

"The South Bronx has no greater enemy than Donald Trump, who is on a mission to dismantle the social safety net on which Bronx families depend for their survival," Torres said. "Trump is and has always been a fraud.  The South Bronx – the most Democratic area in the nation – will not buy the snake oil that he is selling.

Trump speaks during a campaign event in Wildwood, New Jersey, on May 11, 2024. (Hannah Beier/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Many business owners in the borough, however, didn’t know that the rally would be taking place when contacted by Fox News Digital this morning.

Liz Adreu, a manager at the Bronx restaurant Chocobar Cortes, was one of those unaware but said she would "probably" vote for Trump. 

Reggie O, the owner of Aduanipa African & Caribbean Grill, said he supported Trump’s policies when he was in office, although he didn’t want to say who he would be voting for, adding that he thinks there’s a very real chance that the state could be flipped at some point in the future, adding that his eatery has just opened and hasn’t been on the receiving end of any crime.

Inflation is putting many businesses under financial strain, especially after they weathered the economic storms of pandemic-era lockdowns. Families too are suffering, Trump’s campaign said.

Former President Trump talks with bodega owner Maad Ahmed during a visit to his store on April 16, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

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"New Yorkers have suffered greatly thanks to Biden’s failed policies. With prices in the Empire State up by 17.5 percent since Biden took office, New York families continue to suffer from high inflation on everyday goods," the statement reads.

Trump last month telegraphed he would be campaigning in the Big Apple when he visited Sanaa Convenience Store in Upper Manhattan. A former clerk, Jose Alba, was attacked by an ex-con there in a July 2022 incident before he infamously stabbed the perp to death in self-defense.

"We're going to come into New York, we're making a big play for New York," Trump told reporters outside. "I love this city, and it's gone so bad in the last three years, four years, and we're going to straighten New York out."