Was Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally an evocation of Nazism?

Published

4 days ago

October 28, 2024

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An evocation of Nazism? Of course it was, and of course it wasn’t.

Like everything else in this election, the narrative cuts both ways.

Madison Square Garden is the iconic venue in New York City for spectacle. It’s a stage for the big event and lends cachet to a candidate closing out his campaign, no doubt.

In appearing at MSG, Donald Trump writes himself on to the same Wikipedia page as the New York Knicks, several hundred rock concerts and two of the three Ali-Frazier fights.

Throw “Nazi” into the search and you’ll find that too – the biggest Nazi rally in US history took place in the Garden in 1939, just months before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Something called the German American Bund hired it for an event, decorating the stage with swastikas for a rally billed as “pro-Americanism”.

For a venue that celebrates its history, there’s no hiding the shame. No hiding to the extent that it can’t have gone unnoticed by Trump campaign organisers, a team managing a candidate once branded “America’s Hitler” by his own running mate and “fascist to the core” by his former senior military adviser.

Only last week, the description was echoed by his former chief of staff, John Kelly, who told the New York Times that Trump had said he wished his military personnel showed him the same deference Adolf Hitler’s Nazi generals showed the German dictator during World War Two. His claims have been denied by Donald Trump.

The MSG booking has been pounced on by Trump’s opponents, who portray him as a dangerous authoritarian laying out an agenda for autocracy in plain sight. For a second Trump term, they say, read Third Reich.

Indeed, former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has accused Trump of re-enacting the 1939 rally, calling him “more unhinged, more unstable” than when she faced him in 2016.

Trump’s team has branded that particular claim “disgusting,” pointing out that she herself has done an event at MSG and her husband Bill accepted the Democratic nomination there.

Byron Donalds, a Republican congressman from Florida who spoke at the MSG rally, told Sky News: “That’s not even a question and you know that. It’s because opponents are dumb and they’re losing and they’re doing anything to get a rise out of voters. Stop that, be better.”

It’s a “nothing to see here”, is the response, with a certainty that any whiff of outrage will blow over. Confidence of Republicans is grounded in experience of handling a political candidate positioned competitively in a presidential race despite the baggage of sexual abuse, business fraud, criminal conviction etc, etc. There was a time when any one of those would have been terminal to a political career – not now.

It is controversy as background noise and a significant number of voters have stopped listening – significant enough to keep him in the race.

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US election: The elderly couple whose marriage has been tested by Trump

Published

18 hours ago

November 1, 2024

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US election: The elderly couple whose marriage has been tested by Trump

When they made America truly great its backbone was forged in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

The steel for 80% of Manhattan’s skyscrapers, many of the US Navy’s battleships, and even the entire San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge, all came from its blast furnaces in the hills north of Philadelphia.

Its mammoth steel plants stretched for almost five miles.

They lie empty and unused, now a huge open-air museum for guided tours led by former plant workers like Don Young.

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The 87-year-old has been married to Barbara for 20 years, but their marriage has been tested in recent months, as have many others in the most divisive presidential election in living memory.

Both Republicans, she is for Donald Trump, he is emphatically not.

Mr Trump, I pointed out, claimed he could make America great again. Did he believe him?

“No, I do not believe him. My wife does,” he said. “I’ve seen the rise of dictators in history.

“As much as I am a studier of the history of industry, I’m also a studier of the history of politics and world politics. And, you know, Mr Trump’s campaign literally, literally mirrors that of Adolf Hitler.”

His wife sees Mr Trump completely differently: “I absolutely do not agree with that. And I’m sorry to hear my husband say this. And I actually believe we have seen what President Trump can do and how our country was when he was in office.”

Trump ‘is the future for America’, Ms Young says

Their town has recovered from the collapse of Bethlehem Steel. But it’s the state of America that worries Ms Young now.

And it is Mr Trump who can save it, she said.

“He is the future for America,” she said. “I don’t want to see people coming over our border. We’ve had women murdered and raped by illegal immigrants. Who wants their children dead as a result of fentanyl, which comes over the border?”

Trump is ‘going to run America into the ground’

Her husband’s view is diametrically opposed.

“I think he’s going to run America into the ground because he does not observe any of the Democratic norms that his predecessors have,” he said.

“He didn’t observe them when he was in office. And so that’s just a window on what will happen in this coming term.”

Pennsylvania will likely determine presidential election result

Their marriage mirrors the state of play in the place they live in.

Pennsylvania is on a knife edge, say the polls, split right down the middle and the outcome here will likely determine the result on election day in this most important of swing states.

They can agree on one thing. They cannot wait for this election to be over.

Mr Young said their marriage can survive a Trump victory. Ms Young thinks so too.

The closest, nastiest, most divisive presidential election in living memory will be over soon. The bitterness and division that has plagued it less so in this deeply polarised country.

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Looting and violence breaks out after Los Angeles Dodgers win baseball’s World Series

Published

1 day ago

October 31, 2024

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Looting and violence breaks out after Los Angeles Dodgers win baseball's World Series

The Los Angeles Dodgers have won baseball’s World Series for the second time in five years but the celebrations were marred by looting and violence.

The Dodgers took the title by beating the New York Yankees 4-1 in the best-of-seven final in New York on Wednesday night, US time.

But soon after the match ended and jubilant Dodgers fans spilled on to the streets to celebrate, there were reports of a bus being set on fire, shops being looted and fireworks thrown at police in scenes of “absolute chaos” in downtown LA.

At around 10.45pm, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) said it received reports of “looting at several stores in the area of 8th and Broadway”.

Ordering people to “leave the area immediately” on X, the force reposted a video of looters raiding a Nike store where a door had been removed so thieves could get in.

Several dispersal orders were issued for different locations in the city, including in streets close to the Dodger Stadium in the Elysian Park area.

A bus was set on fire as part of the disorder.

Eyewitness and LA resident Taylor Rosa, 27, told Sky’s US partner network NBC News it was “absolute chaos”, as people “got out of control and started looting and jumping on top of a bus”.

Among the comments on Instagram were “damn embarrassment” and “they act like the Dodgers lost”.

Multiple arrests were made throughout the night in Echo Park and the downtown area, according to the Los Angeles Scanner account on X.

The LAPD later spoke of a “hostile crowd” and that “various projectiles”, including rocks and bottles, were being thrown at officers.

Meanwhile, two Yankees fans missed the end of the series after they were banned for interfering with play during the fourth match, the New York team’s only win.

They grappled with the Dodgers’s Mookie Betts as he tried to catch a shot by the fence at the Yankee Stadium on Tuesday night.

As Betts leapt at the wall and caught the ball, one fan grabbed his glove with both hands and wrenched the ball out, as another grabbed Betts’s other hand.

They were thrown out of the game and banned from the next one.

The last time the Dodgers won the title, in 2020, the season was shortened by the COVID pandemic, which prevented them from staging a victory parade.

This year’s parade is to take place on Friday.

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US election: Elon Musk summoned to court over $1m giveaways to registered voters

Published

2 days ago

October 31, 2024

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Elon Musk has been summoned to an emergency court hearing on Thursday over the $1m prizes he has been awarding registered voters in swing states.

The Tesla and X chief executive has been ordered by a judge in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to address a civil case by the city’s top prosecutor to stop Mr Musk and his political action committee, America PAC, from giving the cash away.

The suit accuses Mr Musk of operating an illegal lottery and trying to influence voters in next week’s presidential election between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

Mr Musk and his PAC are backing Mr Trump, the Republican nominee.

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The controversial billionaire promised to give $1m (£772,000) each day to resgistered voters in swing states who have signed his online free speech and gun rights petition.

The first $1m was awarded to a man named John Dreher during a campaign event in Pennsylvania on 19 October.

Both Mr Trump and Ms Harris have made repeated visits to the state as they fight for its 19 electoral votes.

Mr Musk is the world’s richest person and is worth $274bn (£210bn), according to Forbes, so the approximate $17m (£13m) he’s vowed to give away is a tiny fraction of his wealth.

The 53-year-old had donated $75m (£58m) to American PAC in the period up to mid-October.

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Documents filed by Philadelphia’s district attorney Larry Krasner also revealed that the lawsuit against Mr Musk had “triggered an avalanche of [social media] posts from Musk’s followers,” many of whom “made antisemitic attacks on Krasner”.

The attorney asked for enhanced security for the hearing, which was originally scheduled for Friday, after users on X had published Mr Krasner’s home address.

America PAC is one of several major political action committees in the US.

Such groups can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money in support of political candidates, on the condition that they do not coordinate with their campaigns or give money to them.

Mr Trump has said he will give Mr Musk a government job if he becomes president again.