Revealed: New York Times' Haberman explains Trump's reasons for latest 'trolling exercise'
Donald Trump has raised eyebrows for his decision to host a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, which is not a swing state, but Maggie Haberman of the New York Times has answers.
Trump's planned rally has led some, including Hillary Clinton, to make comparisons to a famous Nazi rally that was once held at that same spot. A former Barack Obama aide on Saturday even dueled with a conservative commentator on MSNBC over the weekend on that very topic.
But Haberman, who has spent a lot of time with Trump and has sources close to his campaign, explained the five reasons why she thinks Trump has made that controversial move.
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Reason one, according to Haberman, is that the ex-president will finally "get to see his name in lights."
"Mr. Trump was a performer and reality TV star before he was a political candidate and president. (It is worth recalling that at the Republican National Convention this summer in Milwaukee, Mr. Trump appeared onstage with a Broadway-style light display spelling out T-R-U-M-P)," Haberman wrote on Saturday. "For years, Mr. Trump has measured the significance of his rally venues in part by who had appeared there before. And his yardsticks were usually not other politicians, but singers and other celebrities."
Another reason, she said, is that Trump will "generate a blitz of coverage" in the waning days of the campaign.
"Where Mr. Trump goes, television cameras follow," she wrote. "And by coming to one of the media capitals of the United States, the Trump team is aware that he will acquire mountains of coverage in the campaign’s final stretch that will be broadcast and streamed to voters in the crucial battleground states and the rest of the country."
Haberman also called the event a "giant trolling exercise."
"Last spring, when Mr. Trump was on trial on criminal charges of falsifying business records to cover up a 2016 hush-money payment to a porn star who claimed to have had an affair with him, he held a rally in the Bronx. He also visited a bodega in Harlem," the reporter added. "Mr. Trump was determined to show up at various spots in New York, and at the time, his advisers were hoping to plan a summer rally at the Garden."
Haberman also notes that the event will help down-ballot Republicans, and claimed that it's still the former president's "preferred city."
"Mr. Trump may have rebuffed New York in 2019 to re-register as a voter in Florida — primarily for tax purposes, according to people close to him — but he has never stopped wanting to spend time at Trump Tower in his longtime hometown," she wrote while calling Trump's hopes of winning the state a "long shot."
"As it turns out, he has been able to spend a sizable amount of time there this year, in part because of his various trials."