In the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump lost Manhattan — in New York City — by over 500,000 — meaning a full half a million — votes. And in a new interview with the right-wing outlet Breitbart also spotlighted in reporting elsewhere, he suggested holding a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden, a well-known venue located in what could be termed the geographical heart of that region of New York City.
“But we’re going to do these other states too, and it will be a heavy move,” Trump said. “I may rent Madison Square Garden and that’s the belly of the beast, right?” He suggested that his campaign could do well in recently Democratic Party-leaning states like New York and nearby New Jersey — something for which there’s no clear evidence after he lost both jurisdictions by significant margins both times he was already on the general election’s ballot in recent presidential races.
It’s not the first time he or his allies have claimed something similar, though. Mike Lindell of the company MyPillow — who’s facing wide-ranging defamation litigation in connection to his election lies — claimed Trump actually won California, which is known for very often backing Democrats in presidential elections. The reality is that the former president lost the state in the 2020 presidential contest Lindell was discussing.
Meanwhile, Trump has already begun laying potential groundwork for claims of fraud in the 2024 election like the false claims that he’s so persistently spread after the 2020 race. He has repeatedly claimed on his knock-off social media site Truth Social that Democrats are signing up undocumented immigrants to the United States for voting ahead of forthcoming races, with the evident implication that this alleged process will produce illegal votes. There’s no evidence supporting any stage of this conspiracy theory, whether that Democrats are setting up an “invasion” of undocumented immigrants at the southern border at all or that they’re specifically pushing undocumented immigrants onto voter rolls.
