Michael Patrick Leahy, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of The Tennessee Star, said former President Donald Trump’s Bronx campaign rally in New York City last week was a “turning point in the 2024 election.”
Leahy said Trump’s Bronx rally, which drew a crowd of approximately 10,000 people, had a feeling of “traditional Americanism” and happiness.
“Things feel different. I think when historians look back on the 2024 election, I believe they will point to that rally in the Bronx as a turning point. It’s got a feeling of happiness. It’s got a feeling of traditional Americanism. It’s got a feeling of everybody being united. I just love that,” Leahy said on Friday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Leahy pointed to Democrat Rev. Ruben Diaz, Sr.’s endorsement of Trump during the Bronx rally as an example of people uniting behind the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.
“[Diaz] has been a long-time Democrat fixture in the Bronx. Again, joy and happiness. America is coming back and it’s coming back in all places. The Bronx, united. The country is being united by Donald J. Trump,” Leahy said.
“There was a period of time where with all this litigation, you did have the sense that perhaps maybe Donald Trump was feeling beleaguered. But boy, his messaging [of positivity] has been great, and he’s really talking about everybody and uniting everybody,” Leahy added.
When it comes to a “shift in momentum” behind Trump’s MAGA movement, Leahy said there has been a noticeable change as the lawfare against the former president has been “exposed as crooked.”
“There’s been a shift in momentum. The shift is that the lawfare has been exposed as crooked. The cross examination of Michael Cohen, for instance, in the hush money trial, just a few miles away from that Trump rally, that took the momentum, took the wind out of the sails of the leftists going after Trump. Now, we still don’t know how the jury will decide but I think the sense is that even if the jury is as crooked as the judge and the prosecutors and Trump is convicted, I don’t think it’s going to make a difference,” Leahy said.
After playing and discussing clips of Trump’s speech from the Bronx rally where the former president articulated a uniting and uplifting message about his vision for the nation, Leahy played a recent clip of incumbent President Joe Biden failing to read a teleprompter and instead saying, “We cannot win this reelection. Excuse me. We can only reelect Donald Trump.”
“That’s a difference. There was no excitement, no rallies. Look, that Bronx rally last night, a turning point in the 2024 election. Momentum is here. Momentum is back with the Make America Great Again movement. I know all of these whiners and people saying ‘We’re doomed.’ We’re not doomed. We are not doomed. We control our own destiny. That destiny is to reelect Donald Trump president. They can cheat. They can try and cheat. We’re going to catch them. We’re going to beat them, and we’re going to make America great again,” Leahy said.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Trump in the Bronx” by Donald Trump.
