The Ghosts in The Garden

FOTP News in Review for . . . Sunday, October 27th, 2024

Considering the latest epochal abomination from Donald Trump — his Bund II: The Reawakening at Madison Square Garden last night — I decided another discussion of another unconscionable performance by Republican Vice Presidential Candidate J.D. Vance on a Sunday morning talk show was as necessary as an enlarged lymph node.

There was a relentless, gleeful vitriolic drumbeat coming from the West Side of Manhattan on Sunday. It was a night of conjuring.

From NPR

On the evening of Feb. 20, 1939, the marquee of New York's Madison Square Garden was lit up with the evening's main event: a "Pro American Rally." The organizers had chosen the date in celebration of George Washington's birthday and had procured a 30-foot-tall banner of America's first president for the stage. More than 20,000 men and women streamed inside and took their seats. The view they had was stunning: Washington was hung between American flags — and swastikas.

From USA Today

They camped out overnight, packed the subways, turned the skyscraper-enclosed streets into a river of red MAGA hats and paraded cars and trucks laden with Donald Trump flags through the heart of the Big Apple. The Republican presidential nominee was in town and his "Make America Great Again" supporters were out in force to show that even in the bluest part of one of the bluest states they are a movement to be reckoned with. Trump’s image blazed on the Jumbotrons outside Madison Square Garden with the words “Dream Big Again!” and his supporters were dreaming about Trump back in the White House, propelled over the finish line by a rally Sunday at one of the world’s iconic arenas.

If you’re Donald Trump, you don’t hold such an event at such a place in such a time unless you want there to be a comparison . . . unless you want (and are planning) to have the hold over America that Hitler had over Germany.