NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden may have been the zenith of his roles as entertainer-in-chief for the MAGA faithful but those in attendance were sure it wouldn’t be his last act.
Attending Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden proved to be a feat of endurance. Arriving around four hours ahead of the event’s official start at 2:30 pm, rallygoers were whisked from the exit of Penn Station into a packed crowd with little to no direction from staffers or volunteers. Many looking for the general admission line ended up waiting in the VIP line and many others wandered back and forth looking for someone to ask.
At the entrance on West 32nd Street and 6th Ave., peddlers hocked knock-off Trump merchandise, some of it apparently on an end-of-election season fire sale, with classic MAGA hats going for as low as $10 with newer Dark MAGA merch climbing from there.
While much of the crowd poured directly out of Penn Station, the sea of MAGA hats engulfed multiple city blocks as early as 11 am. Though most rallygoers wouldn’t have seen the crowd after getting in one of the lines for the stadium, latecomers reported that the crowd stretched for blocks, with some claiming that the crowd of MAGA adherents stretched all the way to Columbus Circle, 25 blocks uptown of the entrance to Madison Square Garden. It was clear from overheard conversations that Trump’s acolytes were gleeful at the prospect of inconveniencing the Democratic residents of New York.
When someone did find their way into one of the street-wide corrals serving as a line, they were, for all intents and purposes, on their own in a sea of people.
There were no facilities provided for the tens of thousands of people standing in the street, no bathrooms and no place to get water except for a few restaurants on that block of 32nd street and stepping inside any of them would require you to forfeit your place in line. This created an ad hoc business for industrious bystanders who would take orders from the crowd and who acted as a courier between the MAGA crowd and the Sbarro on 33rd and 7th.
So the crowd waited. Some had arrived the previous day to secure their entry, others filtered in throughout the morning. Advice online suggested arriving four to five hours before the rally began to make sure you could get in, though this would later prove to be insufficient. People passed the time watching right-wing news broadcasts or chatting. One man watched cartoonist Scott Adams’s podcast out loud on his phone and another woman filmed different people in the crowd while yelling “Trump, Trump, Trump.”
There was an overwhelming sense of confidence among fans that Trump would not only win the election but that he couldn’t lose it, with many if not most rallygoers saying they thought Democrats would have to cheat to win.
One rallygoer, William Tate, a forty-something caterer and audio engineer, said he was “uptight” because “you have a political party that has proven that they will do anything under the sun to retain power,” referencing the Democrats. He later said he thought that the Democrats would refuse to certify the results if Trump won and that they would “fabricate some form of an attack” in order to delegitimize Trump’s support.
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Ellison Talbung, a 48-year-old product support engineer from Massachusetts, said that he was confident Trump was going to win and said that the event was “joyous.” When asked whether he thought Democrats would have to cheat to win he said, “honestly, at this, at this, at this time of election, I would have to say yes, for a lot of reasons.”
Another rallygoer, Carrie Wise, a registered nurse from Nassau County, said that she was feeling hopeful for Trump’s victory and that “I feel like Trump will protect us.” She added that “I will be curious as to the validity of it” if Democrats win this year.
During the hours spent in line on 32nd Street, chants of “USA” and “let us in” echoed through the Midtown streets. When speakers started at 2:30 pm people began watching the broadcast on their phones.
People weaved in and out of the crowd, filming for their own small-time online broadcasts and passing out fliers and stickers. One handout was a sticker for “CNN” where the “C” was replaced with a “hammer and sickle.” Another read “truth is the new hate speech” and many more were crude mockups of "virgin vs. chad" memes put onto stickers airing the imagined threat that the LGBTQ community poses to children.
One man wandered the crowd passing out a flier he described as “instructions for having elections without government involvement,” laying out baffling claims of election fraud and advocating for a new constitution under which there would be an election "whenever 50% of the people assemble in the streets.” The betting company Kalshi also had employees throwing t-shirts into the crowd, encouraging people to “bet on Trump,” while ads for the site flashed on screens across the streets.
What was at first a trickle became a stream and the crowds outside began to thin out. It was as if people had been waiting simply to say that they’d seen Trump at Madison Square Garden.
There was considerable drinking and smoking in the crowd, making the environment akin to some sort of right-wing Shakedown Street and even on the windswept midtown street the smell of tobacco hung over the crowd. Despite the guest instructions, Trump supporters discussed plans to sneak booze into the venue while others smoked cigarettes and a few more cannabis. Young men at the event were wary of speaking on the record for fear of potential impacts on their romantic prospects and the notion that they might be ostracized at work.
Unfortunately, arriving four hours before the event started landed you in the first group in line that would not be allowed into the stadium. Instead, this cohort was the first group to be ushered into the semi-exclusive overflow area directly outside the arena underneath the Jumbotron outside the Garden. When the gates opened people rushed inside, scrambling to get closest to the screen. One woman during the event said she was excited to be so close because she could “smell the Trump from here.”
In due time, the crowd pushed down the barrier between the overflow area and 7th Ave., because after hours of standing people had begun to climb and sit on the temporary fence. Others stood on the planters outside the Garden handing onto the leafless trees for a vantage point from which they could drink canned cocktails and have their cries heard over the rest of the crowd.
There were early applause lines, like when comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made a bizarre and racist joke about how Latinos were outbreeding other Americans, an apparent reference to the frequent MAGA talking point, the Great Replacement Theory, which was alluded to throughout the night.
“These Latinos, they love making babies, too,” Hinchcliffe said. “There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside just like they did to our country.”
At the beginning of the night, however, the Trump fans ignored many of the speakers and the hum of the crowd was as loud as the sound from the Jumbotron. In conversations throughout the whole event, Trump supporters congratulated themselves and each other on being free thinkers while rehashing the very talking points they were there to receive.
One of the first guests to receive an uproar of applause was former Fox News Host Tucker Carlson. The crowd cheered as he claimed Vice President Kamala Harris was not Black, with many in the crowd hurling epithets and obscenities at the Jumbotron expressing their hatred for Harris and the people who plan to vote for her.
Throughout the night, young men dressed as Trump rattled off impressions of the former president, promising to put immigrants in camps and decrying impeachment while imitating the former president’s signature raspy tone. Others crushed beer cans and shouted slurs from their perches and hurled epithets about Democrats.
Hulk Hogan, the former professional wrestler was also a crowd favorite, with his “hawk tuah” joke inspired the crowd to cheer that Harris is a “slut,” as was Dr. Phil McGraw, whose speech directly addressed the MAGA desire for mainstream cultural legitimacy and to not be criticized for the things they say and do.
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McGraw’s speech, like Carlson and Hogan’s, also cut directly to the significance of Trump’s event at the Garden. Behind the hate, the xenophobia, the racism, the promises of retribution and the eerie echoes of the 1939 Nazi rally at the Garden, the event was the epitome of Trump’s version of politics as entertainment. The entertainer-in-chief had finally sold out the most iconic venue in America and the gaping maw of the MAGA movement had engulfed city blocks in the media capital of the world.
Other speakers like Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, billionaire Elon Musk and former presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy Jr., drew enormous applause from the crowds. At one point when Vance began to speak of Gov. Tim Walz some in the crowd turned to the topic of joy with one young man closing his eyes, bowing his head and saying “That’s not joy, this is real joy, this is real love” as he swayed with the crowd.
The praise for the other speakers, however, paled in comparison to the applause Trump himself received when he took the stage nearly two and a half hours late. Standing at the rally, listening to Trump speak after nearly a decade of campaigning for president was like attending a rock concert for a band that’s past its prime. Like a washed-up guitarist, Trump’s so-called “weave” was often aimless and longwinded but filled with riffs that longtime listeners would know and love. By far the biggest applause line of the night was went Trump promised the death penalty for any immigrant found to have killed an American citizen.
Shortly after Trump took the stage, however, something else almost began to happen. People steadily filed out of the venue. What was at first a trickle became a stream and the crowds outside began to thin out. It was as if people had been waiting simply to say that they’d seen Trump at Madison Square Garden and didn’t feel the need to stay for the hour-plus main event that was his speech.
A more practical explanation might be that by the time Trump started speaking people near or inside the venue had probably been standing for at least ten or eleven hours to see their entertainer, if not more. Only the most dedicated had managed to wait to see Trump speak at the Garden but even many of them were not willing to see it through to the end.
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