“I fuck with Trump. He from New York, and he’s not a loser. I don’t like ‘we can’t,’ I like ‘we can.’”
That is a quote from a constituent of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) at former President Donald Trump’s Bronx rally on Thursday.
“New York City is blue, Brooklyn is blue, Queens is blue, the Bronx is blue, and [Trump’s] got nowhere to go, so he’s decided to go to the south Bronx,” Cortez (D-NY) told MSNBC last week, ahead of the event that drew thousands of locals from across the Bronx and the boroughs.
The last visit by a president or presidential candidate to the Bronx before Trump’s Thursday night rally appears to have been — although it’s not easy to find, as it is apparently an obscure thing to look up — in December 1997 by President Bill Clinton. Before that, Jesse Jackson spent a night in a public housing project in 1984 while seeking the Democratic Party nomination for president. And before that, President Jimmy Carter visited in October 1977 to make it a “symbol of urban decay.” All photo-ops.
So, because no national figures ever actually go there to interact with the residents, the people of the Bronx are often spoken for, and caricatured, by media and politicians claiming to represent them.
(Breitbart News)
On any given day, the Bronx’s most high-profile representative, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is talking about “racism,” January 6, saving “democracy” from Trump, and the “environment.” She called concerns over inflation “propaganda.”
Congressman Ritchie Torres (D-NY), another Bronx rep, said last week that Trump is “nothing more than a criminal suspect,” and “his priority is not the people of the Bronx … and I’m confident the people of the Bronx are not going to buy the snake oil he’s selling,” during an appearance on MSNBC’s elite “news” program, Morning Joe.
Given that these people allegedly “represent” those who live in the Bronx, it was pretty shocking on Thursday when Breitbart News spoke to residents of the neighborhood, finding that there is a massive disconnect between how they are spoken for and what their concerns and priorities actually are.
What you are about to read is a series of conversations some of those people who attended the Trump Rally had with Breitbart News, in their own words, sharing their stories, their values, and why they are legitimately open-minded to Trump.
People from neighborhoods like the Bronx, and other “inner city” areas, are painted in the media as some sort of separate culture from the rest of America that has separate interests and concerns unlike other working-class people. But, actually, in what ought to not come as a surprise, the people who live in the outer boroughs have the exact same ideas about daily life as anyone else. They care about their livelihood, their family, their country, and their future as Americans — contrary to what their electeds portray their interests to be.
The narrative set by the people who get cameras in their faces is that these working people are different, that they could never hear Trump out. However, actually speaking to them, you learn really quickly that these working people are just more forgotten men. And being forgotten is creating a populist uprising in a supposedly unlikely place — while the Democrats have no idea.
(Breitbart News)
“HE HAS THAT CHARISMA BEHIND HIM, YOU KNOW, THAT RIZZ.”
“If we can’t break ourselves from the chains of the world elites, nobody’s free. At the end of the day, that’s what it ties down to. At the end of the day, you gotta think about this: people in New York live to work. They want us to be cogs, and basically robots, you feel me, so we can just keep doing whatever the fuck they want us to,” a man in his late-20s, who identified himself as “Peter,” obviously a pseudonym, told Breitbart News.
“I’m talking about the people going through it, you feel me, there’s a lot of us going through it, and [Trump] got a lot of jobs back, made employment a little better for people, so I hope he continues to do that if he gets elected again,” he continued.
“I never really been into politics necessarily, I just feel like — and this is just me being honest, my honest opinion, no political bias, anything — I just feel like Trump would do better at this very point in time than [President Joe] Biden. Biden been doing a lot of weird stuff, you feel me,” he said.
“Most of us won’t really get into what the politics are behind the rally, I’mma tell you the real, there’s gonna be a good amount of people who is just here for the hype!,” Peter’s friend, Brandon, also in his late-20s, added. “Up here in the Bronx, they are very anti-Biden. Maybe the older heads, you know, people in their 40s they’ll stay Democratic because that’s all they know, but the younger generation for sure, yeah, super Trump.”
Peter is slim and has short tight curls and tattoos, and what looked like a stab-wound scar on his cheek and a smaller one on his jaw, which he said he got from the “streets” without elaborating. At first unassuming, when he got some space to talk, he had wisdom that could only come from hard knocks. Much wiser than his congressional representation who came up in Yorktown Heights, Westchester County, and thinks the world will end in less than a decade now because of global warming.
(Breitbart News)
“We live in a jungle. Being in prison and stuff like that, you learn, and you observe, and you see how people are, psychologically you learn how a lot of people are. You start understanding their motives and stuff, just through seeing their body language and stuff like that. … Psychologically speaking, [Trump is] above the rest. Not gonna lie to you. … And he has that charisma behind him, you know, that rizz.”
Another young man named Keith, told Breitbart News he was a former Democrat until life changed under Trump — economic conditions especially.
“During the Obama era, I was a Democrat, and then I started doing some research … I listened to what Trump had to say and that skewed my idea a little bit. … When he won [in 2016] I was kinda like confused why he won, but then I went and did more research into it and I was like, ‘ok I understand why he won,’” 21 year old Keith told Breitbart News.
He was attending the event with his mother, just three blocks from AOC’s district NY-14, which he has lived in “all my life.”
“We been voting Democrat for the longest, and black people been struggling, so then, under Trump, we was thriving — black businesses, everything — so we down for Trump, ride or die,” he continued.
“WE SPENDING MORE ON EVERYTHING.”
Koby, who is in his late-30s, wearing a star spangled banner handkerchief under a black flat-brim baseball hat and black shades, told Breitbart News a similar story — he realized life under Democratic Party governance wasn’t what was promised and that made him question his allegiances.
(Breitbart News)
“I said, ‘wait a minute, things are getting way out of hand under the Democratic Party.’ So, next thing you know, I know that I’m a Christian like that, so I kind of align my values with Republicans like that, just kind of agree on everything else. So, other than that, I said you know what, with all this stuff that the Democrats is doing, I started listening to other people. I listened to Trump himself, and I was like, ‘Yo, I don’t feel like I can be down for the Democrats no more.’ So I left the Democrats like three years ago, so now its been three years since I became a conservative and stuff like that,” he explained.
“I’m proud of that. I got a little older, and I kinda think for myself more, and its like, its a whole life. God is good.”
“We spending more on everything. Eggs is like 12 dollars for a dozen, a box of cereal is like nine dollars. It’s crazy. Everybody’s feeling the pressure, people starting to wake up, you know. … I used to spend 800-900 dollars on me and my four kids for the month for food, now I’m spending 1500,” a man named Jason told Breitbart News. “I’m tired of hearing the old Spanish ladies in the supermarket complain that everything’s too much. But I’m like, ‘yo,’ I’m feeling it hard, you know? When Trump was in office, we was good, I was making more money, I got a raise every three months, the boss was able to put money towards the workers, you know what I’m saying?”
“THEY TRYNA SELL THIS ‘WE ARE THE WORLD’ BULLSHIT.”
Jason also explained that not only is life not better under the Democratic Party, but the mainstreaming of progressive policy has been upsetting traditional working-class liberal voters. This view was expressed by a number of people who spoke to Breitbart News.
“You wouldn’t have seen this in 2016, you would have had people hiding,” Jason said, referring to the Bronx bash. “[Obama] didn’t do nothing for nobody, nobody. He helped the gay people more than he helped out just American citizens.”
“He did nothing for his own people, but he did more for the gays. The gays got more out of Obama than anybody else really in America, especially black people. You wanna keep us in welfare, but like, Trump tryna push us to get jobs. There’s nothing wrong with actually making your own money, you don’t wanna survive on the system your whole life,” Sabrina, who was there with Jason, added.
(Breitbart News)
Sabrina cut in, explaining how she feels American citizens are getting a raw deal, while illegal immigration is rampant and benefits are being doled out to people who haven’t paid into the system. She told Breitbart News that she works at a migrant shelter, which housed the four migrants who reportedly brutally beat New York City Police officers in January.
“It’s clear they not doing their job at the border because some of these people are in gangs, they come from jail, they’re criminals, its crazy, they have no respect for authority or law enforcement,” she said.
“That’s not right, this is not a third world country. And then when we try to say we’re gonna send them back, ‘Oh, we don’t want them back, y’all can keep them.’ That’s not how the world works, sweetie! They are not American citizens, they are citizens of your country, that’s your problem now. Nobody told you to send your problem out to us, now you have to deal with it. Its not America’s position to fix everybody’s problems. Sometimes America just have to like, mind they business, sit back,” Sabrina continued.
“Y’all have no money for our citizens, but somehow Ukraine can get all our money? Every single time, getting billions and billions, like, where the money for our citizens? When we wanna fix our bridges and tunnels and highways, oh, we don’t got enough budget. Y’all wanna cut police budget, y’all wanna cut teachers budget, y’all wanna cut libraries, y’all wanna put the gay agenda in our kids’ head and try to tell them that parents don’t have no rights? That’s not right.”
Sounds eerily like, “America First.”
Keith had said the same thing: “The whole migrant crisis that’s goin on, they giving money to them, and defunding the police, like, we not here for that, we’re not tryna do that,” he said, before explaining he lives among “lots of crime,” citing a recent shooting on the street where he lives.
A similar sentiment was also expressed by a young man named Ty, who told Breitbart News the Democrats are trying to “sell this ‘we are the world’ bullshit.”
(Breitbart News)
“They tryna sell this ‘we are the world’ bullshit. That’s not how the world works,” Ty told Breitbart News. “I feel like the far left is evil, I feel like what they do is evil. I feel like they’re socialists, communists. I feel like they’re trying to globalize the world, I feel like they’re trying to take away everything that’s good about this country, and they’re trying to sell it off and pawn it off to other countries, brick by brick, piece by piece.”
“THIS IS MAGA COUNTRY!”
And its not just the radical policy on open borders and foreign policy that has the uptown residents vexed. There were multiple people who expressed extreme discomfort with the Democratic Party’s obsession with race and sexuality, which have become — for reasons unclear — cornerstones of the Democratic Party’s platform.
Peter told Breitbart News that the “LGBT” agenda being adopted by Democrats and promoted in elementary schools is “corrupting their minds” — naming Joe Biden specifically as someone he does not trust with kids.
“If you really want me to be real with you, I’m not gonna sit here and try to sugar coat it, my main issue is that I feel like Biden is more towards pushing certain ideas that, traditionally speaking, as a people, and I’m talking about in general, we’ve never really been accustomed to it,” he began.
(Breitbart News)
“And he’s kinda trying to push it in schools. You see a lot of, like I’m talking about the LGBT stuff. I’m not against them, you feel me. I feel like everybody should be free to be able to do whatever they wanna do, but when you get to the point where you got all this goin on in schools, you got people introducing and incorporating books that are introducing sexual themes to kids that are under the age of ten years old — they don’t even realize what sex is by that point — you’re corrupting their minds, you know what I’m saying? So Biden is for that — he’s really for that whole movement. Leave the children alone and give them the opportunity to be who they wanna be,” he explained.
“And another thing … just from the videos I done seen of him sniffin’ little girls, you know, that’s enough for me to not wanna fuck with boy. I don’t see Trump do that. I ain’t never seen Trump do that. Trump has said some outrageous shit, he done acted a little outlandish before, but I ain’t never seen in my life Trump go to a two-year-old and sniff her neck. What’s wrong with you? Am I tripping?”
Ty — who is black — also said the “social justice” bent on the left was a turn off, and he took issue with the race narrative being promulgated among left-wing media and politicians, specifically citing the George Floyd sainthood that they bought into.
“I started watching all the videos, and watching CNN and watching Fox News, and I compared the two. And I felt like CNN was just a whole bunch of bullshit that was trying to sell race-baiting and all types of stuff that isn’t true. I feel like most of it isn’t true. Like obviously there’s racism in America, but there’s racism in other countries too. And the messages they’re conveying, I don’t feel like its true. It’s fake news, it’s bullshit. What you see on CNN is just programming. See all these protests — George Floyd put a gun to a baby’s head, and that’s the type of person that you want representing America? It is what it is, I’m not saying nothing but the truth. Black, white, at the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter,” he said.
(Breitbart News)
While Jason and Sabrina were being interviewed by Breitbart News, they were interrupted by a black man screaming next to them: “THIS IS MAGA COUNTRY!”
“That’s a supporter,” Jason quipped.
Sabrina paused, deadpan, waiting for him to finish yelling, then said, “they try to say Trump was a racist, but all races was here today, with love and big support for Trump. So to say he’s a racist, maybe y’all gotta look in the mirror and look at yourselves, like Biden.”
“FAKE RALLIES”
Speaking to CNN as the event was about to take place, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) called Trump’s supporters “clowns,” insisting it was a “made-up, fake” rally.
“Well, I’ll tell you what won’t make a difference at all … and that’s for Donald Trump to be a ringleader and invite all his clowns to a place like the Bronx,” Hochul told CNN. “New York will never, ever support Donald Trump for president.”
“So if he wants to spend his time doing these made-up, fake rallies and pretending there’s support here, be my guest.”
But they aren’t, and it wasn’t.
(Breitbart News)
There was a day, years years ago, when we were told the same thing about the blue-collar rust-belt. That they were loyal Democrats: Ohio is blue, Michigan is blue, the “blue wall.”
And then, when no one was looking, Ohio turned red. Michigan turned red. The blue wall was destroyed. And their representatives didn’t know how or why before it was too late.
Everyone who is a Democrat is just a Democrat, and listening to them doesn’t matter. Until it’s too late.
The Democrats have a bad habit of taking their voters for granted, and New York is one of the worst cases of that, and has been for years. They could get away with it because the state Republican Party had a very meek presence and no viable alternatives to offer.
However, when it comes to Trump, that is not the case. Trump walked into the “blue” Bronx and presented a real offering of business, and jobs, and border security, and infrastructure upgrades, and lower inflation. He touched on issues people actually care about and topics people actually grapple with. Issues and topics the Democrats can offer the usual on — nothing.
But people are catching on, and this isn’t “propaganda” or “fake.” This is a warning.
Emma-Jo Morris is the Politics Editor at Breitbart News News. Email her at ejmorris@Breitbart News.com or follow her on Twitter.