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“Breaking News,” an MSNBC banner insisted on Sunday night. “Trump’s MSG rally comes 85 years after pro-Nazi rally at the famed arena.” The far-left network’s breathless report featured chilling black-and-white footage of the German American Bund’s notorious National Socialist gathering, complete with swastika armbands and stiff-armed salutes.
Referring to Trump’s packed-to-the rafters event at Madison Square Garden, MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart said: “But that jamboree happening right now, you see it there on your screen in that place, is particularly chilling because in 1939, more than 20,000 supporters of a different fascist leader, Adolf Hitler, packed the Garden for a so-called pro-America rally – a rally where speakers voiced antisemitic rhetoric from a stage draped with Nazi banners.” When a Jewish protester rushed the stage, Capehart explained, American storm troopers yanked his clothes off and beat him as he cradled his head in his arms.
Scary! But much more than that, this is disgusting, vile rubbish. And – as luck would have it – this also is spectacularly inaccurate.
The Nazi rally happened at the old Madison Square Garden at 8th Avenue and West 49th Street, home of today’s Worldwide Plaza office and retail complex. Trump and his supporters were not “in that place,” as MSNBC’s misinformation claimed.
Former President Donald Trump and former First Lady Melania Trump during a campaign event at Madison Square Garden in New York, on Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. (Adam Gray/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
In fact, Trump’s extravaganza was a mile south, at 8th Avenue and West 33rd Street, in a venue that began hosting events in 1968 – the same year that the old MSG was demolished and turned into a parking lot. Not only was the MAGA nation not on the same defiled ground as that pre-World War II Hitlerfest. The facility in question has not even existed for 56 years.
The entire premise of MSNBC’s hyperventilation – and that of Hillary Clinton and other Trump haters – has collapsed like an arena pummeled by a wrecking ball. Too bad these Trumpophobes didn’t spend five minutes on the Google machine to learn about MSG’s three incarnations, the first two of which were razed. Perhaps drowning Trump in archival footage of swastika flags is just too important to engage in high-school-paper level fact-checking.
The left’s entire Nuremberg-Rally-on-the-Hudson Big Lie suffers from more than just a fatally flawed timeline.
Trump’s event, which I was pleased and proud to attend, bore no resemblance whatsoever to the 1939 occasion that has the left soiling themselves in fear.
Rather than ferocious U.S. storm troopers, I saw thousands of calm, cheerful men, women and children lined up from the middle of West 33rd Street and wrapped north and then east around 1 Penn Plaza – all the way to the middle of West 34th Street. They peacefully and patriotically waited in a cool autumn breeze to enter MSG.
Once inside – as far as I could tell – no Jews were yanked from the stage and pounded into submission. Au contraire, Trump advisor Stephen Miller, Trump’s friend and golf partner Steve Witkoff, and Cantor Fitzgerald chief Howard Lutnick were welcomed to the stage. These Jewish gentlemen offered warm and passionate words of support for Trump.
The crowd – which filled every row, all the way to the top aisle behind the podium –cheered and applauded these speakers with abundant enthusiasm. Miller, Witkoff and Lutnick were permitted to leave the stage. All three were fully dressed, and none exhibited signs of physical assault or trauma.
In an even more dramatic departure from Nazism, Congressman Byron Donalds, R-Fla., and Death Row Records Co-Founder Michael “Harry O” Harris addressed the red-capped masses. These two Black men also endorsed Trump, to the enormous satisfaction of the mega-MAGA faithful.
Attendees hold signs during a campaign event with former President Donald Trump, not pictured, at Madison Square Garden in New York, on Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. (Photographer: Adam Gray/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The occasion also featured the characteristically fiery-yet-eloquent words of former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy – a Hindu distinctly lacking in blond hair and blue eyes. Ramaswamy (much like Miller) electrified the audience with his stirring advocacy of Trump and his policies.
The youngest major presidential contender in memory also said that gay Americans were welcome in the MAGA tent, so long as they agreed with Trump and his followers that men and boys have no place in women’s and girls’ sports, and gender transition should be limited to adults. “Gay marriage is fine, but hands off the kids!” is a MAGA tenet that enjoys widespread appeal across the ideological spectrum.
The event felt like a one-day Republican National Convention. The excitement, energy and camaraderie recalled one of those quadrennial nominating affairs. The speakers were also of that caliber. They included, among others, former congresswoman and recent GOP convert Tulsi Gabbard, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., Hulk Hogan and Eric and Lara Trump.
The GOP nominee’s other son was aghast at what inflation did to his family’s recent fast-food tab. ” If Donald Trump Jr. has sticker shock at McDonald’s, we have a serious problem in our country.”
This occasion had its surreal qualities, political commentator Tucker Carlson noted. “Just another day following Bobby Kennedy, Jr., at a Donald Trump rally in Madison Square Garden … Yeah, that’s totally normal!”
Among the speeches and snippets of classic rock tunes such as “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Sweet Child of Mine,” the campaign presented multiple new slogans on screens and in videos and hallway displays. Many are four words long, like Make America Great Again. They are caveman-simple, but direct, powerful, compelling and manly:
- “Better Off with Trump”
- “Dream Big Again”
- “No Tax on Overtime”
- “Make America Strong Again”
And my favorite:
Former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a campaign rally for former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden in New York on October 27, 2024. (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)
Melania Trump made a surprise appearance, to introduce her husband. As Donald J. Trump finally took the stage to a deafening ovation, Lee Greenwood serenaded the once and perhaps future First Couple with a live rendition of “I’m Proud to Be an American.”
Trump himself spoke positively and optimistically about November 5 as “Liberation Day” and promised a fascinating combination of major tax cuts, deregulation, energy liberation, Elon Musk and Howard Lutnick to lead a massive federal budget-slashing effort, tariffs, and Golden Rule trade policy (regarding international commerce, do unto other nations as they do onto us). I call this supply-side protectionism. I like the first part better than the second. If anyone can fuse these two seemingly contradictory approaches, it would have to be Donald J. Trump.
Rather than a Thousand Year Reich, which Hitler promised Germany, Trump spoke warmly of “a new golden age.”
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This occasion had its surreal qualities, political commentator Tucker Carlson noted. “Just another day following Bobby Kennedy, Jr., at a Donald Trump rally in Madison Square Garden … Yeah, that’s totally normal!”
The event’s one sour note was comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s crack about an island made of garbage floating in the middle of the ocean: Puerto Rico. He was the day’s first speaker and appeared when MSG was about half full. While the rest of his set was amusing, that line drew appropriately few laughs and, instead, something between silence and groans. Trump and his campaign have disassociated themselves from those remarks.
It’s a damn shame that Hinchcliffe is a noxious distraction from an otherwise upbeat and extraordinary event in modern politics. And Adolf Hitler would have hated the whole thing.