AP
A Nazi rally it was not.
Madison Square Garden, the greatest arena in the world, where America’s most celebrated icons have taken the stage, was packed to the rafters with patriotic Americans cheering on the formidable ensemble of Donald “Captain America” Trump and the Avengers, as some of his surrogates call themselves.
Trump’s hometown, deep blue New York — whose unpopular Democrat leaders have tried to lock him up — welcomed the former president back as a conquering hero, filling the stadium to bursting, with thousands more New Yorkers lining the route from Trump Tower to cheer his motorcade.
But in his third and most consequential bid for the presidency, Trump is not alone. He is supported by a surprising group of five extraordinarily accomplished Americans, including two apostate Democratic presidential candidates who joined him on stage.
The X factor
Jordan Peterson calls them “the X-Men,” the Marvel Comics superheroes, the “misfit mutant” geniuses come to save the Republic. They are Trump’s warriors against the monsters of the Deep State and the Blob of censorship, surveillance and war.
They put the lie to the Dems’ final desperate campaign message, that Trump is Hitler and half of America are Nazis.
There is Elon Musk, the Tony Stark-like scientific genius, quite literally an X-Man, as the owner of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, and a space explorer who will send a man to Mars. A libertarian, he openly declared his support for Trump after the first assassination attempt in Butler, Pa.
Then there is the son of Democrat royalty, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who abandoned his own presidential campaign to hitch his wagon to Trump as the only candidate who stands against the Deep State.
Another former Democrat, Army Reserve officer and 2020 presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, not only has thrown her support behind Trump, but has become a Republican. Gabbard, as Peterson says, is everything that Kamala Harris pretends to be — accomplished, articulate and principled.
There is Vivek Ramaswamy, the smart young entrepreneur who abandoned his own presidential bid to join Trump’s campaign.
Last but not least is Trump’s brilliant running mate, JD Vance, the articulate “hillbilly who pulled himself out of the Appalachians by his bootstraps,” as Peterson describes him.
Special mention on the Trump A-team goes to former First Lady Melania Trump who introduced her husband just after 7 p.m.
Much to the chagrin of Trump detractors, she is very much by his side, publicly tender with him at the Al Smith dinner, and carving her own powerful role in the campaign with social commentary in her own book and social media videos.
“This city and America needs its magic back,” she said, promising her husband will give American “the future that we deserve.”
Then she welcomed him on stage with a warm embrace, three kisses and several pats on the back as they hugged to his trademark background song of “God Bless the USA.”
“I’m thrilled to be back in the city I love . . . This is the town that taught me that Americans can do anything if they want to,” Trump said.
“Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” he asked as the crowd roared, “No.”
“I’m here today with a message of hope for all Americans,” he says, promising a new “golden age.”
He boasted: “We’re building the biggest, broadest coalition . . . including union workers and border patrol . . . police and firefighters . . . The Republican Party has become the party of inclusion.”
He promised: “I will prevent World War III from happening . . . I will restore free speech . . . We will stop the illegal migration . . . We will not be invaded, we will not be occupied, we will not be overrun, we will not be conquered.”
Liberation day
He told the crowd that their vote would show “the most sinister and corrupt forces [that] this nation does not belong to them.”
He also said, “My rhetoric will end wars.
“Kamala broke it but I will fix it . . . She is just a vessel [of the Deep State]. We’re running against something much bigger than [Harris or Biden]. We’re running against the massive vicious crooked radical left machine that runs the Democratic Party . . . this amorphous group of people. We have to defeat . . . the enemy from within.”
Number one X-Man, Musk, came on stage earlier in the night wearing his favorite Dark MAGA cap, after being described by Howard Lutnick, his fellow co-founder of Trump’s proposed “Department of Government Efficiency,” as “the greatest capitalist in the history of the world.”
Musk promised DOGE would strip $2 trillion from the $6.5 trillion Biden-Harris budget.
“We’re going to get the government off your back and out of your pocketbook,” he said. “The future is going to be amazing.”
Follow the latest on Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden:
- Trump’s NYC rally at MSG live updates: RFK Jr, Dr. Phil and Hulk Hogan take the stage
- Anti-Trump protesters get into tense standoff outside Penn Station
- Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe quips at Trump MSG rally: ‘Democrat Party looks more like a Diddy Party’
- Melania Trump headlines Donald’s Madison Square Garden rally in rare campaign appearance
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was welcomed on stage to the tune of “American Bad Ass” by Kid Rock, as he explained that he did not leave the Democratic Party. “The Democratic Party left me.”
He says it used to be the party of “constitutional rights, civil rights and free speech,” that stood up to “censorship and surveillance, stood up to the CIA and the military industrial complex.”
But the Democratic Party has become the opposite of what it once was. It is the “party of war, the party of the CIA . . . the party of Wall Street and the party of Bill Gates who just gave [them] 50 million dollars.”
“Harris’ campaign is very proud it received the endorsement of 50 former CIA officers, of John Bolton and Dick Cheney. These are the people who gave us the war in Iraq, the worst foreign policy catastrophe that’s ever happened to this country. These are the people who gave us the Patriot act the surveillance act . . . who are trying to undermine voting rights . . . weaponize federal agencies.”
He noted, “This is the party of Wall Street, Big Banks, Big Data, Big Tech, military contractors, Big Pharma, Big Ag . . . We deserve a president . . . who will restore the moral authority of the USA, end the warfare state and rebuild the middle class.”
Reassembled
Vance paid tribute to Trump, who “gave up the easy life to save the United States of America.”
“When they couldn’t beat him, they tried to bankrupt him, they tried to impeach him, they tried to put him in federal prison, and when that didn’t work they even tried to kill him. [But] he stands ready to fight, ready to win, ready to make America great again.”
As Peterson says in a new video psychoanalyzing the former president, any leader comfortable surrounding himself with such brilliant people does not suffer from the pathological narcissism Trump’s enemies attribute to him.
To the contrary, Trump takes deep pride in his group of X-men stars who are helping him forge a coalition of working class traditional Democrats, blacks, Hispanics, libertarians and Republicans who he believes will unite the country behind his presidency.
Madison Square Garden was just a taste of things to come.