Walz compares Trump's Madison Square Garden rally to 1939 pro-Nazi event
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, compared former President Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden in New York to a 1939 pro-Nazi event on Sunday.
“Donald Trump’s got this big rally going at Madison Square Garden,” Walz said at an event in Henderson, Nev. “There’s a direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the mid-1930s at Madison Square Garden.”
An American Nazi Party held a rally at Madison Square Garden in February 1939 that lured 20,000 supporters to the iconic New York City landmark.
“And don’t think that he doesn’t know for one second exactly what they’re doing there,” Walz said.
Trump, alongside his running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), is holding an event at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. While Trump has his origins in the Empire State, Vice President Harris is leading him in New York by 17.8 points, according to an average of polls from The Hill/Decision Desk HQ.
“So look, we said we’re all running like everything’s on the line because it is, it is,” Walz said at the event in Nevada. “And I’ve been saying for the last three months or so that [there’ll] be plenty of time for all of us to sleep when we’re dead, now is not the time, now is not the time.”
When asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper at a town hall earlier this week if “Trump is a fascist,” the vice president responded “Yes I do.”
Retired Gen. John Kelly, a former chief of staff for Trump, said that the former president had commended Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s generals for their loyalty in a recent interview with The Atlantic. Trump later shot back at Kelly, calling him a “lowlife” and “total degenerate.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) said Sunday on MSNBC that she sees Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally as him “waving the white flag of surrender.”
“He’s coming back to a city that he knows well. He’s comfortable here. Maybe he’d like to sleep in his own bed,” Hochul said.
The Hill has reached out to the Trump campaign.