NEW YORK– NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump returns to New York for the final stretch of the race, planning a rally at the city’s iconic Madison Square Garden.
Trump is planning his event for Oct. 27 to kick off the final week of campaigning, according to a campaign official familiar with the plans who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of a formal announcement.
It will be Trump’s second rally in the city where he grew up a May stop in the South Bronx that attracted a large and diverse audience. He held another one last month on Long Island.
“There are some really big ones coming up. We just rented Madison Square Garden. We are going to play for New York,” Trump said at a rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday afternoon.
He said his campaign also wants to lease arenas in Atlanta, Georgia and New Jersey.
Trump has long said he believes he can win New York, even though it is overwhelmingly Democratic and has lost the state by more than 20 percentage points in the last two elections. But Trump also likes to host events that will attract excessive media attention, such as an event at the so-called World’s Most Famous Arena.
Between stops in critical states like Pennsylvania and North Carolina, Trump will travel this week to states not considered competitive.
On Friday he will visit Aurora, Colorado, a city that has become a flashpoint in the debate over the influx of migrants entering the country in recent years. Democrat Joe Biden won Colorado in 2020 with 55% of the vote.
This summer, Aurora’s mayor repeated a landlord’s claim that a infamous Venezuelan gang however, had taken over a dilapidated apartment complex in suburban Denver Police say this is not true.
Trump and other Republicans have nevertheless seized on the claims, with Trump saying during a Fox News town hall that Venezuelans were “taking over the whole city” and telling rallygoers that if elected he would deploy federal resources to rebuild the city. “liberate”.
On Saturday he will hold a rally in Coachella, California, the site of a major annual outdoor music festival. Trump lost California by about 30 percentage points in the last two elections.
Trump said during his rally that in addition to New York, he also has a role for other Democratic states, including New Jersey, Virginia, New Mexico and Minnesota.