New York | Donald Trump in the Bronx for a rare rally

(New York) Donald Trump held a rare rally on Thursday in the Bronx, a disadvantaged district of New York where he hopes to attract Hispanic and African-American voters who are showing some signs of weakness in their support for Joe Biden.

“African-Americans are being massacred, Hispanic-Americans are being massacred” at the economic level, launched the Republican candidate, in front of a few thousand people gathered in a large park, who welcomed him with cries of “USA, USA”, and “four more years”.

Donald Trump accused the “millions” of migrants arriving at the Mexican border of being the cause of job and housing losses for these minorities. He then painted an apocalyptic portrait of these migrants, described as criminals of all kinds coming from the four corners of the world. To the point of suspecting these “men”, “in physical shape, they are between 19 and 25 years old […] and they are old enough to fight,” to want to “build an army” inside the United States.

Donald Trump, who has embraced an increasingly violent rhetoric on immigration, is promising the largest “deportation operation” in US history.

Denouncing inflation, which he attributes to Joe Biden, on the prices of gasoline – or bacon – he also promised to reduce energy costs by 50% from his first year in office if he returns to the White House.

On trial

A little over a month before his first campaign debate against Joe Biden on CNN, the Republican candidate, 77, once again mocked his Democratic opponent, four years his senior, about his age and physical health: “ he doesn’t know he’s alive,” he attacked, during a speech lasting more than an hour and a half.

Often blocked in New York by his mandatory presence at his trial for hidden payments to an X-rated movie star, Donald Trump has recently increased his campaign outings in his hometown, where he made his fortune in real estate and where scrappers skies bear his name. But New York is a Democratic stronghold, and Donald Trump only received 15% of the vote in the Bronx in 2020.

By going to this neighborhood, where more than 55% of Hispanics and nearly 30% of African-Americans live, the Republican candidate for the November 5 presidential election wants to prove that he can attract crowds among these minorities perceived as an essential breeding ground for the Democratic camp in the race for the White House.

“He has a little bit of support here and I think he will do a little bit better this time,” said George Marrero, a 68-year-old Hispanic resident of the Bronx who came to the rally.

For his first rally in New York since 2016, the Republican described a city “in decline.” He promised to “bring safety back to our streets,” “success to our schools,” “lower taxes” and “bring businesses and big taxpayers back to New York.”

83% for Biden in 2020

The Bronx voted for Joe Biden by more than 83% in 2020. In 2008, Barack Obama flirted with 89% of the vote there.

Elected officials and left-wing associations demonstrated against his arrival.

Donald Trump was criticized for recently claiming that his legal troubles and his indictments in four different cases made him sympathetic to African Americans mistreated by the justice system, in a country where the incarceration rate of black people and is much higher higher than their share in the population.

But polls showed he made progress among African Americans and Hispanics, particularly among young people and those who blame Joe Biden for the rise in illegal immigration at the Mexican border.

Joe Biden’s campaign team aired an ad before the rally focusing on racial controversies surrounding Donald Trump. In 1989, the businessman called for the death penalty for the five black and Hispanic teenagers wrongly accused and convicted of the rape of a woman in Central Park, one of the most famous cases of miscarriages of justice in the United States, with racism as a backdrop.

Donald Trump’s team says the outgoing president is panicking “because black voters don’t believe what Mr. Biden is selling them.”