(NewsNation) — Former President Donald Trump returned to his home state to hold a rally in Long Island, New York, with 48 days left until election day.
He ripped into Democratic leadership in New York City and state, blaming them for homeless people living in what he called “horrible, disgusting, dangerous, filthy encampments,” and even the conditions on the New York City subway, which he called “squalid and unsafe” and promised to renovate.
“What the hell do you have to lose?” he said in asking for their votes.
Before heading out to the suburbs, Trump stopped at a Bitcoin cafe in New York City. Trump has recently embraced cryptocurrency and on Monday night helped launch his family’s new cryptocurrency venture.
While New York is generally considered to be a reliably blue state, the former president has said a few times over the last few months that he believes New York and neighboring New Jersey could be in play in 2024.
In hopes of swaying voters, he’s planning on focusing on key issues like the cost of living in New York and how it’s soared in recent years. Trump has also put a lot of focus on the border and immigration.
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“When they got in, they let everybody pour into our country. When I got elected, I believe it was the border that was the biggest thing and I fixed it and I did a great job,” Trump said about the Biden administration. “I wanted to mention it in 2020 and my people would say, ‘Sir, nobody cares about the border.’ They don’t care because I had it fixed. Now I got to fix it again.”
New York could actually be within striking range for Trump. There’s not a lot of polling data coming out from the state, but a recent poll from Siena College taken in late July and early August gave Vice President Kamala Harris a 14-point advantage.
There hasn’t been a lot of attention paid to New York, with pollsters focusing on major battleground states, but Trump is still doing his best to pitch his message to voters. That’s especially true after 2022 when Republicans made some gains during the midterm election.
However, one of those districts flipped back to Democrats after the resignation of GOP Rep. George Santos. But Republicans are still emphasizing the area, including Long Island, in hopes of retaining control of the House of Representatives and potentially picking up some new seats for the party.
Trump’s rally Wednesday night was in Uniondale, an area that could be key to Republicans maintaining control of the House. His party is trying to protect 18 Republicans in Democratic-heavy congressional districts that Joe Biden carried in 2020, particularly in coastal New York and California, and going on offense to challenge Democrats elsewhere.
Long Island in particular features one of the most closely watched races, between first-term Republican Rep. Anthony D’Esposito and Democrat Laura Gillen. D’Esposito is a former New York Police detective who won in 2022 in a district that Biden won by about 15 percentage points in 2020.
Trump posted Tuesday on his Truth Social platform that the GOP has “a real chance of winning” New York “for the first time in many decades.” In that same post, Trump also pledged that he would “get SALT back,” suggesting he would eliminate a cap on state and local tax deductions that were part of tax cut legislation he signed into law in 2017.
The so-called SALT cap has led to bigger tax bills for many residents of New York, New Jersey, California and other high-cost, high-tax states, and is an important campaign issue in those states, particularly among those New York Republicans serving in districts Biden won.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
