Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally is already a complete disaster for him

| 4:28 pm EDT October 27, 2024
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Donald Trump’s babysitters are letting him hold a rally at Madison Square Garden today, in a city where he’ll get very few votes, in a state where he’ll get zero electoral votes. It’s more clear than ever that this isn’t about trying to win, it’s about letting Trump feel good about himself. Trump managed to fill the building (which anyone can do in a city with ten million people), but the rally is already going very, very poorly for him.

One of Trump’s featured rally speakers referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” That’s a good way to lose the Hispanic vote. Then he made a joke about Black people and watermelon. That’s a good way to lose even more votes. There was also a crude joke about how Latinos have sex. Then another speaker took the stage and referred to the Trump rally as a “Nazi rally” in a way that maybe was intended to be a joke but instead came off as more of an admission.

Trump hasn’t even taken the stage yet, and he’s already assured of getting wall to wall negative headlines heading into tomorrow. The point of a big city rally down the stretch is to get positive press. This is going to do the precise opposite.

The worse Trump and his campaign screw up, the more contrarian hot takes we have to hear from the media about how this is somehow all part of Trump’s “plan.” But it’s more clear than ever that there is no plan. This rally will cost Trump votes in key swing states. That’s not a plan. It’s triage. It’s what you do when you have a senile candidate and you’re more worried about keeping him sated by letting him do a rally in his hometown than you are about trying to win.