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Donald Trump’s massively oversubscribed rally at Madison Square Garden has caused chaos in midtown Manhattan, with streets closed, traffic blocked and sirens blaring – all standard for New York City but dialled up to 11.
In the hours before the main event started, hundreds of people waited in one queue that snaked down Eighth Avenue, only to find out later they were queueing for a VIP entrance and promptly turned away.
A Trump supporter gestures while protesters gather outside Trump’s campaign rally in Madison Square Garden.Credit: AP
This being New York, there was a sizeable contingent of protesters camped out on the steps of Penn Station, holding signs ranging from “No to Fascism” to “Florida Man go home” and “Mushroom Dick Messiah”.
As anti-Trump bands played, an elderly woman in a motorised wheelchair chanted, “No dictators, no Nazis, no Trump”, and a man wearing devil horns, cow pants and a visible G-string shouted into a megaphone.
Melissa Shelly, from New York’s Upper East Side, and her friend Elaine Gardner were among the Trump fans trying to get into Madison Square Garden.
“I’m trying to get my country back, I’m done with this wokeism,” Shelly said. She said she had to hide her conservatism in her liberal New York social groups.
“I’m a painter, so I just keep it out of the arts circles. They’re really a victim of groupthink; they don’t have an original thought in their brain.”
Gardner said it wasn’t so bad being a Republican in famously blue New York. “As long as you’re friendly with them, they’ll be friendly with you,” she said of Democrats.
“There’s only a few that are actually radical. There’s a lot of hidden Trump supporters. People just don’t want to say it. Here at the Trump rally, you can wear your hat, you can do all that.”