2 weeks Ago
NEW YORK — Most of the speakers at former President Donald Trump ’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday trained their fire on Vice President Kamala Harris and the various national issues they see as her weak points. But among the handful of colorful New York City-area speakers, there was a strong undercurrent of outer-borough reactionary rage about the city’s decline — due to an uptick in crime, or some vaguer grievance that could easily be interpreted as nostalgia for a time when the city’s political elite looked and sounded a bit more like the angry voices on talk radio shows. These are the kind of people Trump rubbed elbows with during his tabloid heyday in the 1980s, when he was funding full-page newspaper ads calling to reinstate the death penalty for the since-exonerated Central Park Five, a group of young Black and Latino men accused of a brutal rape and murder.
When Trump uses his remarks at the Al Smith charity dinner to call progressive former Mayor Bill de Blasio a “terrible mayor” — “That’s not comedy, by the way. That’s fact” — it’s to the city’s aging, right-most quintile of residents, and their friends in the crime-spooked suburbs, that he speaks. It’s of a piece with Trump’s scathing assessments of Detroit and Milwaukee, though, unlike those cities, New York is not located in a swing state, so Sunday’s affair felt more like an airing of grievances for their own sake.
Leading the pack, sure enough, was Sid Rosenberg, conservative host of 77 WABC’s morning drive-time show “Sid and Friends.” “Look at my city: Yes, this building is beautiful. You’re all beautiful.
Look at you!” he declared in his raspy voice. “But you can’t walk outside past about 10 o’clock at night here if you’re a pretty woman like my beautiful wife, Danielle, out there somewhere. You get punched across the face just for walking down the street!” “I’ll tell you, this is not the New York I grew up in.
” “Who did that? Bill de Blasio, Eric Adams — shitty Democrat mayors. Andrew Cuomo, Kathy Hochul — shitty Democrat governors,” he continued. “You got homeless and veterans — Americans, Americans — sleeping in their own feces on a bench in Central Park, but the fuckin’ illegals get whatever they want!” Steve Witkoff, a real-estate investor, was more cryptic in his remarks panning the state of the city in which he was speaking.
“This city shaped who I am, helped me build my business, and gave me my roots. But I’ll tell you, this is not the New York I grew up in,” Witkoff said. “Our city has drifted away from what it once was, but if there is one man who can restore it to its greatness, it is my dear friend, President Donald J.
Trump.” Melania Trump , the former first lady, suggested that New York City residents were leaving because of crime, when evidence suggests the biggest factor for those who decamp is the high cost of housing. “Crime is on the rise while public safety diminishes, creating an environment where families with young children choose to relocate,” she said.
“And this story repeats itself from coast to coast across our nation.” And of course, Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor turned disgraced Trump aide, received a hero’s welcome when he was introduced to the crowd as “America’s mayor” — a moniker he earned following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that has not been in wide use for the better part of a decade now.
“As the mayor, you know that I reduced crime more than any mayor in history,” Giuliani boasted, prompting loud applause from the crowd. “I improved the quality of life in the five boroughs. I lowered taxes.
It was the biggest tax reduction in New York history — not like Donald Trump’s tax reduction, not as big. You know why it was the biggest? It was the only one” in city history. Giuliani’s nostalgia for his two terms as mayor extended to the New York Yankees’ victories in four Major League Baseball world championships, which he jokingly took credit for, and used as a jumping-off point to ding his successors.
In the World Series currently underway, the Yankees trail the Los Angeles Dodgers two games to none. “You think they need my help now? What the heck does Adams know about baseball? And de Blasio’s so stupid, he doesn’t know about anything,” Giuliani said. Giuliani’s remarks were a hit with Phillip Kraese, a union steamfitter from Huntington, New York, and his friend Kristin Uvaydov, a registered nurse from Massapequa — both towns on Long Island.
Kraese said he notices a greater number of unhoused people and panhandlers than he used to when he arrives at Penn Station for early morning construction jobs. “It’s gotten so much worse and that’s why the whole crowd went really crazy when Rudy Giuliani came out,” Uvaydov said. “He cleaned up the city,” Kraese interjected, prompting Uvaydov to repeat the assessment verbatim.
Another feature of reactionary New York City political thought evident at the rally was a Sept. 11-focused brand of Islamophobia. Howard Lutnick, co-chair of Trump’s transition team, was president of the investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald when the firm, located on the top floors of the World Trade Center, lost over 600 of its employees on Sept.
11, 2001. “So, the first thing, we must elect Donald J. Trump president, because we must crush jihad!” Lutnick bellowed after recounting the horror his firm endured 23 years ago.
Giuliani, a staunch Israel hawk, also took the opportunity in his remarks on Sunday to characterize Palestinians in racist terms. “The Palestinians are taught to kill us at 2 years old.” “The Palestinians are taught to kill us at 2 years old.
They don’t want a Palestinian in Jordan. They don’t want a Palestinian in Egypt. And Harris wants to bring them to you,” Giuliani claimed.
“They may have good people. I’m sorry ― I don’t take a risk with people that are taught to kill Americans at 2.” “I’m on the side of Israel,” he continued.
“Donald Trump’s on the side of Israel, and they’re on the side of the terrorists.” In fact, Harris has promised to continue granting Israel military aid without additional conditions — a stance that has cost her the support of Arab American activists and elected officials — and does not have a plan to expand the number of Palestinians eligible to immigrate to the United States. The reality of crime in New York City is similarly more complicated than the picture painted by the speakers at the Madison Square Garden rally.
Like other metropolises across the country, New York City experienced a major uptick in violent crime in late 2020 and 2021. But the city’s homicides, shootings, burglaries, transit crimes, and many other offenses have dropped considerably in the past two years. And even prior to the current decline, the recent rise in crime never so much as approached their peak levels in the early 1990s, when the city first elected Giuliani.
That doesn’t mean that quality-of-life issues have returned to their pre-pandemic levels — or that lingering perceptions about crime, amplified by right-wing media, have not made it a politically potent issue, particularly in the city’s suburbs. Concerns about public safety — and the associated question of state-level criminal justice reforms — played a role in Republicans ’ takeover of four Democrat-held House seats in 2022. For his part, Trump has long pointed to urban crime rates as a reason to vote for him, especially for the people of color often most affected by crime in their neighborhoods.
“New York has gone to hell. Vote Trump!” he posted on social media in October 2020. But while Trump continued to demagogue about crime nationally on Sunday, falsely claiming that ABC News’ David Muir had lied about FBI statistics showing a drop in crime, he actually used a gentler touch than many of the speakers who preceded him when discussing New York City’s specific challenges.
Consider supporting HuffPost starting at $2 to help us provide free, quality journalism that puts people first. Can't afford to contribute? Support HuffPost by creating a free account and log in while you read. Thank you for your past contribution to HuffPost.
We are sincerely grateful for readers like you who help us ensure that we can keep our journalism free for everyone. The stakes are high this year, and our 2024 coverage could use continued support. Would you consider becoming a regular HuffPost contributor? Thank you for your past contribution to HuffPost.
We are sincerely grateful for readers like you who help us ensure that we can keep our journalism free for everyone. The stakes are high this year, and our 2024 coverage could use continued support. We hope you'll consider contributing to HuffPost once more.
Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages. “No city embodies the spirit, energy, potential of the American people more than where we are gathered tonight. We want to win our country, but we also want to win New York and make it safe and strong and beautiful and important and vibrant again,” he said.
“And we’re going to do that, and we’ll work with the mayor, and we’ll work with the governor.” From Our Partner.
