Walz repeats Clinton attack that Trump Madison Square Garden event mirrored 1930s Nazi rally

Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz repeated Hillary Clinton’s attack that former President Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City mirrored a 1930s Nazi event. 

Walz compared Trump’s rally on Sunday night to a 1939 ‘pro-America’ rally held by German dictator Adolf Hitler at Madison Square Garden 85 years ago, before World War II.

‘Donald Trump’s got this big rally going at Madison Square Garden,’ Walz said Sunday at a canvas kickoff event in Las Vegas. ‘There’s a direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the mid 1930s at Madison Square Garden. And don’t think that he doesn’t know for one second exactly what they’re doing there. So, look, we said we’re all running like everything’s on the line because it is.’ 

Trump 2024 senior adviser Tim Murtaugh told ‘Fox & Friends First’ on Monday that Walz’s comment was ‘offensive,’ and that ‘they should be ashamed of themselves.’ 

Clinton also made the comparison, yet as Murtaugh noted, her own husband, former President Bill Clinton, accepted the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination at Madison Square Garden. The iconic venue, more recently known for Billy Joel concerts, New York Knicks basketball and New York Rangers hockey, has hosted four Democratic conventions and one Republican convention. 

Then-presidential candidate Jimmy Carter accepted the Democratic nomination at Madison Square Garden in 1980. Then-President George W. Bush accepted the Republican nomination at the same venue in 2004.

‘It’s ridiculous. Here’s Kamala Harris, who Donald Trump is currently beating, which means she and her campaign are calling more than half the country a bunch of Nazis and yet she wants to be president of it,’ Murtaugh said. ‘There was an Israeli flag flying in Madison Square Garden. President Trump has been recently endorsed by imams in Detroit, and we had a Holocaust survivor as a special guest at the rally last night. And for Tim Walz to come out and say that, it is offensive, it is belittling to what actually happened in Europe at the hands of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust that killed 6 million Jews.’ 

‘To make light of that by trying to score political points against your American opponent three quarters of a century later is horribly offensive,’ he added. ‘This is a dying campaign, this is a struggling campaign, and they’re throwing anything at the wall that will stick. They should be ashamed of themselves.’ 

Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden reportedly reached the venue’s maximum 19,500 capacity. 

Donald Trump Jr. said that nearly 200,000 people tried to attend. The last time a Republican presidential candidate won the popular vote in deep blue New York was 1984 by Ronald Reagan.