Former President Donald Trump called his New York City rally over the weekend that featured racist language and insults "a love fest.”
The Republican presidential nominee made the comments Tuesday during an on-camera appearance at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
“I don't think anybody has ever seen anything like what happened the other night at Madison Square Garden. The love in that room – it was breathtaking,” Trump said to cheers from people assembled to hear his remarks in Florida. “You could have filled it many, many times with the people that were unable to get in. Politicians that have been doing this for a long time, 30 and 40 years, said there's never been an event so beautiful. It was like a love fest, an absolute love fest, and it was my honor to be involved.”
Speakers at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday called the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” labeled Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris “the devil” and falsely said Harris had begun her career as a prostitute.
Trump also reacted to criticism from some Democrats that the rally was similar to a 1939 gathering of American Nazis at Madison Square Garden. The 1939 rally, organized by the pro-Nazi organization German American Bund, featured rhetoric that demonized Jews and Communists and called for the rise of fascism in the United States, according to information from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
“How terrible to say, right?” Trump said. “Many people have used [Madison Sqaure Garden], but nobody's ever had a crowd like that. And, I tell you what right now, nobody's ever had love like that. That was love in the room, and it was love for our country.”
The moment was not the first time Trump addressed comparisons to Nazism. Last night, during a rally in Atlanta, the GOP nominee referred to himself as “the opposite of a Nazi.” He falsely charged that Harris and her campaign have called him Adolf Hitler or a Nazi. Neither the vice president nor her campaign have explicitly used those terms.
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