The year was 1984. The candidate was Ronald Reagan. "The Gipper" was the last Republican president to win New York State, when he crushed Democrat Walter Mondale.
Barring a last-minute, massive meltdown of the Kamala Harris campaign, the current vice president is expected to win the Empire State over President Trump in the 2024 election.
That isn't stopping the New York billionaire, business owner, and political outsider from hitting the campaign trail in his native state.
“Welcome to Woodstock, Nassau County-style: Peace, Love and Donald Trump,” Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman offered to the uproarious Nassau Coliseum faithful on Wednesday — joining several local GOP leaders, including former Congressman and 2022 candidate for Governor Lee Zeldin (Shirley), in warming up an already red hot crowd for their beloved main event.
As always, the bravest showman put on a great show.
“When I told some people in Washington, ‘Yeah, I’m going up to New York, we’re doing a campaign speech’ They said, ‘What do you mean New York? You can’t ever. Nobody can win. Republicans can’t win,’” Trump began. “I said, ‘I can win New York. We can win New York. We’re going to win New York.’”
Trump next shouted out his host Uniondale, other local towns like Levittown and Hicksville, and even Huntington of Suffolk County, as cities that wield “arteries of American commerce” — high-standard business, art, culture, streets, ports and waterways — that have been torpedoed by radical left Democrats.
A 29% increase in robbery, a 36% increase in felony assault, a 42% increase in grand larceny, and a 75% increase in carjackings plagues New York City alone, says Trump; not to mention, the rise in violence, and worse—all pointing to crime control, or lack thereof, by way of a system ravaged from the top-down, which has more than spilled over into Long Island statistics and heartsickness alike.
Officer Jonathan Diller, a Franklin Square born-and-raised NYPD Officer, devoted husband and father of an infant son, was shot and killed at a traffic stop in East Rockaway, Queens, on March 25 of this year.
The reports grew worse with each hour.
His alleged shooter Guy Rivera had 21 arrests prior, yet was out and about and, and therefore, permitted to positively wreak havoc thanks to bail reform laxness that sends violent offenders home and civilian defenders to Heaven.
Makes sense.
Consequently, families like the Diller’s, like the NYPD, like an entire nation of common sense-wielders, demanded answers.
Trump did not just provide one; he provided several—which began when he visited with the Diller family at the time and vows to continue to do so. Notably, Trump was invited to attend Diller’s funeral services soon thereafter while Governor Kathy Hochul was reportedly unwelcomed, and emotionally confronted by a mourner as she departed his wake—with little wonder as to why.
“He was just 31 years old, gunned down during a traffic stop by a vicious thug,” Trump recalled. “This is the kind of story we hear every single day under radical Democrat policies like cashless bail, cashless bail. You kill somebody and you’re out on the streets in two hours. Cashless bail has been a disaster for our country. Kamala Harris wanted it no matter where she went.”
Trump adds, “I tell the officers all the time, ‘You have no idea how the people love you, but sometimes they don’t feel it because of what the Democrats do to them, they will end deadly sanctuary city policies. They will terminate cashless bail. And they will return to proven policing methods like we had under Mayor Rudy Giuliani,’” who Trump calls a “fantastic mayor that made New York City the safest big city in America.”
Earlier that evening, Giuliani said to rally attendees that from the moment Trump arrived as a true political force nearly a decade ago, “there was a conspiracy to destroy him.” An impassioned woman in the crowd exclaimed in agreement: “You’re right, Rudy! You’re right!”
Giuliani went on to emphatically take to task his peer’s marksmen of the past — especially the literal Bullets Trump just keeps on dodging with each passing week: “No more attacks! No more attacks! No more! Stop it! If there’s anybody behind it, I’ll find them. I did it to the Mafia, I can do it to them. If you’re behind it, I’m looking at you, and I’m gonna get you!”
Trump honored both Giuliani’s foremost mayoral efforts and the New York City Firefighters Union Local 94, in lockstep with an “amazing job” done by the 9/11 National Memorial Museum, by announcing he would designate the World Trade Center ground zero site a national monument as president. He said “the hallowed ground and the memory of those who perished there will be preserved for all time, preserved forever.”
From unchecked Coney Island rapists to Springfield, Ohio’s alleged animal eaters, Trump's double down demands that immigrant criminals need not become immigrant convicts the US tax-paying public pay to keep imprisoned, or pay for worse when they are let out, rather immigrants sent back from which they came.
Preventing domestic terrorism at all costs, just as they have eradicated it overseas, sits atop a rejuvenated Trump administration’s items to prioritize.
“A key part of restoring safety and saving our economy is stopping the invasion at the border of our country,” Trump states, calling Kamala Harris the “border czar” in charge of “the worst-run border in the history of the world.”
“What’s happening to our country is we’re just destroying the fabric of life in our country,” Trump said. “We’re not going to take it any longer. You got to get rid of these people. Give me a shot. You will have a safe New York within three months. Three months. For every New Yorker being terrorized by this wave of migrant crime, November 5th will be your liberation day.”
If the purported leakage of her stacked debate deck is any indication of Harris’s fend-off capabilities, then let such suffice as proof of yet another case made in point by Trump. An unverified six-page affidavit from an alleged "whistleblower" made the waves this week, suggesting that Harris’s camp-declared “wallop” over Trump in the September 10 debate was procured under false pretenses.
The story goes that ABC News broke debate rules to conspire in close collaboration with the Democratic presidential nominee and current vice president to “gang up” on Trump during the debate’s proceedings.
In response, Pershing Square CEO Bill Ackman wrote to Walt Disney Company CEO Robert Iger via X that, while he “can’t determine the veracity of the allegations, they do match substantively what took place during the debate,” citing factors like Harris’s smaller podium and question load.
“The moderators of the debate — @DavidMuir and @LinseyDavis — have yet to respond to the allegations,” Ackman added. “Since they have not yet done so, one must draw a negative inference. In light of the seriousness of the allegations and the implications for this presidential election and for ABC’s reputation and thereby @Disney’s and the office of the CEO, I strongly encourage you to launch an immediate investigation of this matter. Our democracy depends on transparency, particularly about events which can impact the outcome of the presidential election. I ask on behalf of all voters that you treat these allegations with the seriousness they deserve.”
From the debate, the left has also spun victor over Trump by peddling that the wildest of his claims—after running with running mate, Ohio Senator and “Hillbilly Elegy” novelist JD Vance’s tip that Facebook Group chatter unearthed reports of migrants eating “cats and dogs” in Springfield, Ohio—have since inspired opposing entities the world over to cry rebuff and debunk.
However, The Federalist did receive a police phone call confirming a group of Haitian imports in the area carrying four geese a few weeks back. “I’m sitting here, I’m riding on the trail, I’m going to my orientation for my job today, and I see a group of Haitian people, there was about four of ’em, they all had geese in their hand,” the caller told dispatch.
Per the August 26 police report filing, the caller (claims he) saw two men and two women, each carrying a single goose, between Water and Warder Street — locations in the city that’s about 50 miles from the state capital.
According to a Siena College poll released on Thursday, 39% of likely New York voters told pollsters they view the 45th president favorably, and 57% view him poorly; meanwhile, just 35% of voters in the Empire State view Hochul favorably, with 54% viewing her poorly.
"It is also worth noting that Hochul’s favorability rating, 20 points underwater, is worse than Trump’s, 18 points underwater," Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg said in the poll's press release. "To repeat, Kathy Hochul has a lower net favorability rating in New York than Donald Trump."
Scott LoBaido – speed-painter of “Fight at the Coliseum” — told South Shore Press News Director Stefan Mychajliw ahead of the rally hours before he unveiled his latest creation.
“Of course, New York is in play. Ronald Reagan had New York. We had Pataki. We had Giuliani. This state is turning ‘red’ at the drop of a red hat.”
What do you have to lose?