The crowd at former President Donald Trump‘s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday got energized on Sunday when Vivek Ramaswamy made the striking assertion that deep blue New York has become a “swing state.”
A biotech entrepreneur who ran in the GOP primaries before dropping out and endorsing Trump, Ramaswamy said the “energy” in the arena did not feel like “second place energy” to him.
Ramaswamy then said a billionaire friend of his had texted him in the morning and asked, ‘Why the hell are you guys wasting your time in New York City instead of going to a swing state?’” According to Ramaswamy, he told this person, “‘Welcome to 2024. New York is a swing state.”
Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy: “This does NOT feel like second place energy in here tonight!” pic.twitter.com/SUJdlWZMVt
— RSBN 🇺🇸 (@RSBNetwork) October 27, 2024
While the line earned a loud round of cheers from the audience, it would be quite the undertaking for Trump to actually make New York a competitive race.
FiveThirtyEight’s poll tracker shows Trump trailing Vice President Kamala Harris by 14.5 points. That’s about half the margin by which President Joe Biden led Trump around this time in the 2020 cycle.
Trump, a real estate tycoon who was born in New York City, spent a sizable chunk of time in the Big Apple in recent years for a slew of court battles, making additional stops to boost his campaign along the way.
His attorney and adviser, Alina Habba, spoke about the “lawfare” overshadowing Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign during her remarks at the Madison Square Garden on Sunday.
“They thought they could take the greatest president down through lawfare, with lawsuits, fake charges, raids, and endless investigations,” Habba said. “They thought they could crush the man who built this city’s skyline,” she added. “But they underestimated how hard Trump would fight!”
She also said: “They tried to keep President Trump and his campaign in courtrooms being persecuted. But, do you know what he did while he was in those New York courtrooms? He won the hearts and minds of the American people all from this city!”
Ramaswamy and Habba were two of dozens of people lined up to speak at the rally in Madison Square Garden. Trump is expected to deliver remarks, as is Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), Trump’s running mate; tech billionaire Elon Musk; Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime Democrat who ran an independent campaign for president before joining forces with Trump; Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democrat congresswoman from Hawaii who recently joined the Republican Party; and many others.
