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Former President Donald J. Trump, who has been spending much of his time recently as a criminal defendant in a Manhattan courtroom, will be in a different New York borough next Thursday, when he will hold a campaign event in the Bronx.
The gathering is scheduled to take place at Crotona Park, his campaign announced in a statement on Friday evening, declaring that Mr. Trump would “ease the financial pressures placed on households and re-establish law and order in New York!”
It is an unusual location for a Republican presidential campaign event: The area went for President Biden by about 77 percentage points in the 2020 election. And despite a shift to the right in some of New York State’s congressional districts and neighborhoods, including in the Bronx, in recent years, the state as a whole is not considered a general-election battleground.
But Mr. Trump’s aides have been discussing an event in the South Bronx for weeks. The gathering, they said, would not be a traditional rally.
The idea has been to make appearances around New York City during Mr. Trump’s required attendance at his criminal trial in Manhattan, on charges he falsified business records to cover up a hush-money payment to a porn star during the 2016 presidential election.
Last month, in his first campaign stop since the start of the trial, Mr. Trump visited a bodega in Harlem, attacking the district attorney prosecuting him and casting himself as tough on crime.
The former president told donors at a Manhattan fund-raiser this week that he was planning something in the South Bronx, making a joke that he might get hurt in the neighborhood.
“We’re going to have a tremendous rally. You may never see me again,” he said, prompting laughter, according to an attendee who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private event. “That could be a tricky one.”
Representative Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat who represents the South Bronx, wrote on social media that the area had “no greater enemy than Donald Trump,” casting him as a threat to the social safety net “on which Bronx families depend for their survival.”
“The South Bronx — the most Democratic area in the nation — will not buy the snake oil that he is selling,” Mr. Torres wrote.
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