The former president made a prediction in a Thursday morning campaign stop.
Former President Donald Trump predicted Thursday he might be able to win New York state in the 2024 election, saying the campaign will “make a play” to the typically blue state.
The former president has mostly remained in New York, his home state, for more than a week while he has to make mandatory court appearances in his so-called “hush-money” trial in Manhattan.
“Traditionally, a Democrat would win New York, but we’ve seen some new polls and I think we’re gonna do very well in New York,” President Trump told reporters on Thursday morning at a campaign stop at a Manhattan construction site, adding that other polls suggest he is leading in “every swing state.” A crowd of union workers chanted “four more years” along with the former president’s name, according to on-site reporters.
“It’s an amazing show of affection,” President Trump said at around 6:30 a.m., or three hours before Thursday’s trial is slated to start. “The Teamsters union loves me. We’ve built a lot of great buildings with the Teamsters. They’re very, very talented people. We used to do three floors a week in concrete on these buildings, and that’s because of these guys here.”
The former president, meanwhile, entered court Thursday for another trial date, which is likely to feature more witness testimony and a possible judge’s decision on whether he violated a gag order with social media posts. There are no trial dates on Wednesdays.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, charged President Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records, a class E felony in New York state. While President Trump has pleaded not guilty, prosecutors must convince the jury that he committed the crime in “furtherance of another crime” in order for it to be a felony, not a misdemeanor.
At issue are payments that were sent by the former president’s campaign to a former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to bury allegations about her personal life during the 2016 campaign. Prosecutors this week claimed that President Trump, Mr. Cohen, and former National Enquirer publisher and witness David Pecker hatched a scheme to find and suppress negative allegations against the former president during the campaign.
