Donald Trump's Former Lawyer Pours Cold Water on Bronx Rally Turnout

Jenna Ellis reads a statement after pleading guilty to a felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings, inside Fulton Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee's Fulton County Courtroom at the Fulton County Courthouse October 24, 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia. Ellis, a former Donald Trump lawyer, poured cold water on Friday on the conflicting reports of the size of the crowd at the former president’s rally in New York.

Jenna Ellis, a former Donald Trump lawyer, poured cold water on Friday on the conflicting reports about the crowd size at the former president's rally in the Bronx, New York.

As the 2024 election draws closer, Trump and President Joe Biden, the presumptive nominees for the Republican and Democratic party's presidential nomination respectively, are continuing to hit the campaign trail. On Thursday, the former president held a rally in Crotona Park, South Bronx, a Democratic borough of New York City to drum up support as he spoke about his potential plans for the city if he's reelected to the White House.

Since the rally, the crowd size has drawn conflicting reports as Trump's spokesperson Steven Cheung previously told Newsweek in a statement that 25,000 people attended the rally. Meanwhile, others have noted a smaller crowd size.

X, formerly Twitter, account The Shallow State wrote on Thursday that the "size of the crowd was small." In addition, attorney and Trump critic Ron Filipkowski noted a comparison to the overall population of New York City and wrote the "right-wing media can hype this Bronx rally all they want. In a city of over 8 million people Trump drew 4,000 tops. That's with a lot of people from out of state."

Ellis, who served as Trump's lawyer during the 2020 presidential campaign, took to X on Friday to discuss the rally as she called it "performative theater," adding that despite the conflicting reports about the crowd size "optics are everything."

"I'd bet there were more people from Ohio than the Bronx at Trump's rally last night. It was purely performative theater, like much of what he does, but was it also effective? Optics are everything, and his message reached well beyond the Bronx — perhaps to Black voters in Atlanta where the debate will be soon, or in Ohio," she wrote.

This comes as the former president garnered just 16 percent of the vote in the Bronx in the 2020 election, whereas Biden won north of 80 percent, according to the Associated Press. However, as Trump and Republicans have made gains with Black and Hispanic voters, his campaign and conservative supporters in New York are hopeful he will perform better in the borough and the state this time around. About 65 percent of Bronx residents are Hispanic and approximately 31 percent are Black.

Ellis, who said she cannot endorse Trump in this year's election, also wrote on X that the rally gave donors something to "see."

"It also likely reached his actual target audience: donors. Seeing is believing, as they say, and he gave them something to "see," thereby believing he can really win someplace like the Bronx, so they'll be inclined to donate more to "the cause" de jour," she added.

Although it's unclear the number of people at the rally on Thursday, according to The New York Times, which cited the New York Police Department (NYPD), the rally had a permit for 3,500 people.

Newsweek has reached out to Trump's spokesperson via email for comment.

In September 2023, Ellis said on her radio show she cannot endorse Trump, "I know [Trump] well as a friend and a former boss, I have great love and respect for him personally. I simply can't support him for elected office again. Why I have chosen to distance is because of that frankly malignant, narcissistic tendency to say that he's never done anything wrong."

Ellis' comments on the rally come after she accepted a plea deal and pleaded guilty to one felony count in the Georgia 2020 election interference case in October 2023 after she was indicted alongside the former president and 17 others in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' sprawling racketeering case. As part of her plea deal, she was required to write an apology letter to the people of Georgia. Trump, meanwhile, has pleaded not guilty in the case and has consistently denied wrongdoing.

Since her plea deal, Ellis has received backlash from supporters of Trump's Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement as they demanded she refund the money they had donated to her legal defense fund for the case. Ellis raised over $216,000 on her GiveSendGo fundraiser.

On Friday, Ellis took aim at MAGA supporters and wrote on X, "I get supporting Trump over Biden. Completely. But who in their right mind would actually want to identify as 'MAGA' when it's nothing more than total idolatry at this stage?"

The former president's rally comes ahead of his and Biden's first debate on June 27 hosted by CNN at the network's studio in Georgia, a critical battleground state.

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