Former President Donald Trump visited a bodega in New York City on Sunday and blasted President Biden’s record on crime, inflation, and illegal immigration. Trump also announced that he would hold a campaign rally in the Bronx on Thursday, his first rally in the state since 2016.
The rally is scheduled to take place at 6 p.m. in Crotona Park, a 127-acre public park just blocks away from the boundary line of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s district. The New York Post reports that the campaign has a permit for 3,500 people.
In announcing the rally, Trump’s campaign took several swipes at Biden’s record, saying that New York City and the state at large have been ravaged by violent crime as a direct result of Biden’s and Democrats’ pro-criminal policies.
The campaign also highlighted Trump’s fondness for the state, which he once called home, and said that Biden has decimated the Empire State.
The rally announcement has been met with mixed reactions. Rep. Ritchie John Torres, a Democrat who represents New York’s 15th congressional district where the rally is being held, blasted the former president in a statement to Fox News Digital.
Torres said that the South Bronx has no greater enemy than Donald Trump, who is on a mission to dismantle the social safety net on which Bronx families depend for their survival.
Many business owners in the borough, however, didn’t know that the rally would be taking place when contacted by Fox News Digital on Monday morning.
Liz Adreu, a manager at the Bronx restaurant Chocobar Cortes, was one of those unaware but said she would “probably” vote for Trump.
Reggie O, the owner of Aduanipa African & Caribbean Grill, said he supported Trump’s policies when he was in office, although he didn’t want to say who he would be voting for. O added that he thinks there’s a very real chance that the state could be flipped at some point in the future, although his eatery has just opened and hasn’t been on the receiving end of any crime.
Inflation is putting many businesses under financial strain, especially after they weathered the economic storms of pandemic-era lockdowns. Families too are suffering, Trump’s campaign said.
“New Yorkers have suffered greatly thanks to Biden’s failed policies. With prices in the Empire State up by 17.5 percent since Biden took office, New York families continue to suffer from high inflation on everyday goods,” the statement reads.
Trump last month telegraphed he would be campaigning in the Big Apple when he visited Sanaa Convenience Store in Upper Manhattan. A former clerk, Jose Alba, was attacked by an ex-con there in a July 2022 incident before he infamously stabbed the perp to death in self-defense.
“We’re going to come into New York, we’re making a big play for New York,” Trump told reporters outside. “I love this city, and it’s gone so bad in the last three years, four years, and we’re going to straighten New York out.”
