Another night at the Garden: How Trump’s rally echoed one in 1939

Madison Square Garden, as speakers at Donald Trump’s Sunday night rally in the arena were eager to remind the audience, is one of the most famous venues in the world. It’s where two professional sports teams play and is a mandatory stop for tours of best-selling performers, in part because it’s trivially easy to tap into the millions of people that live in the New York City area. It literally sits on top of a train station that has lines running throughout the city, out to Long Island and over to New Jersey.

“The fact that we can pack Madison Square Garden in the heart of New York City,” Donald Trump Jr. said on Sunday, “shows me that the spirit of the American people is there” — that is, with his father, the pop star of the evening. Trump Jr. was one of about a dozen opening acts at the event, a sort of mini version of the July convention that marked the high-water mark of his father’s campaign.