NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump will campaign in one of the nation’s most Democratic boroughs on Thursday, holding a rally in New York’s Bronx borough to court minority voters, days before the jury begins debating in his trial in Manhattan on charges of paying to conceal damaging information.
Trump will address his supporters in Crotona Park, a public green space in a district that is among the most diverse and impoverished in the city, in contrast to the majority white areas where he holds most of his rallies.
His campaign team said he is expected to draw a crowd of several thousand people.
With Trump confined to New York for the past six weeks, the presumptive Republican nominee’s campaign team planned a series of local events in his hometown before and after the trial.
The former White House tenant visited a warehouse in Harlem, stopped by a construction site one morning and took a photo at a local fire station.
The Bronx rally will be Trump’s first event open to the general public.
The former president insists that this time he could win an overwhelmingly Democratic state that has not supported a Republican for president since Ronald Reagan in 1984.
In addition to creating a spectacle of attendees and protesters, the rally also allows Trump to highlight what he argues are advantages on economic and immigration issues that could take votes away from Democrats.
“The strategy is to show voters in the Bronx and New York that this is not a typical presidential election, that Donald Trump is here to represent everyone and get our country back on track,” said Florida Republican Rep. Byron Donalds, Trump’s possible running mate, who grew up in Brooklyn and will join him at the rally.
Source: With information from AP.
