Trump paints Long Island red
If Donald Trump is elected in November, it will almost certainly be without New York’s 28 electoral votes.
But that doesn’t mean the state is not important to Trump and the Republicans, as the former president reminded more than 16,000 supporters at the Nassau Coliseum last Wednesday night.
Trump made it plain, during a cheer-inducing 80-minute address, that the night was actually about more than him — it was a trumpet call to Long Islanders to vote for Republican congressional candidates on whose election the fate of a Republican-controlled House of Representatives may hinge.
“A vote for Kamala Harris is a vote to obliterate Israel,” he said.
Long Island’s Republican congressional contenders spoke ahead of Trump.
Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, who is facing challenger Laura Gillen in the nominally blue 4th CD that includes the Five Towns as well as the Nassau Coliseum where Trump spoke, described the Democratic Party as “dangerous.”
Harris “broke our economy, she broke our border, she broke our peace in the Middle East, she’s broken our world,” he said. “She’s weak, she’s a failure.”
Mike LiPetri, who would like to unseat Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi in the 3rd CD, also spoke.
As did Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, who Trump later on singled out for praise.
“Under Donald J Trump, we had peace and prosperity,” Blakeman said, blaming the Biden-Harris administraiton “that funded Iran to attack our best ally, the State of Israel.”
“We cannot afford another four years of Biden and Harris — high grocery prices, high gasoline prices, crime and lawlessness, higher taxes, a world at war — nothing will change, it will only become worse under come Kamala Harris,” he said.
“Nassau County protects the integrity and safety of women’s sports, and Nassau County unmasked the criminals, antisemites and hate mongers,” he adding, urging Trump’s eleciton so the country could “get back to common sense.”
“Let’s save our country, and let it start right here,” he said. “Let it start on Long Island, and go throughout the whole state of New York and the state of New Jersey and roll across America.”
Former Rep. Lee Zeldin of LI, who left Congress for an unexpectedly close challenge to Gov. Kathy Hochul in 2022, said Democrats “gave us a broken economy, a broken border, a broken world.”
In voting for Trump, Zeldin said, “we’re voting for a strong economy … a secure border [and] for a military focused on defending America.”
Zeldin said Trump had his support “because I don’t believe that boys should be able to play girls sports, I don’t believe that males should be able to access female bathrooms, I don’t believe that non-citizens should ever be given the right to vote.”
Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Harvard University graduate who is a champion of pro-Israel students, told the crowd he was a Democrat who realized it was time for him to change.
“I tried pressuring my party to take the issue of antisemitism seriously” but did not get a positive response, he said. “Elections are binary choices, and this election I’m going to vote with the president who told us that he will not allow one penny of American taxpayer money to fund antisemitic, unAmerican universities like Harvard, like Columbia, like MIT.
“I’m going to vote for the president who told us that he will expel non-American students who violate our laws and abuse the foreign visa system. And I am going to vote for the president who won’t negotiate with Hamas terrorists, he’ll kill Hamas terrorists.”
