Trump tells boisterous Long Island rally he will win New York after assassination plots hardened my resolve

UNIONDALE, N.Y.— Former President Donald Trump basked in the adulation of thousands of supporters on Long Island Wednesday night — insisting that recent attempts to kill him had “hardened my resolve” and predicting he would be the first Republican candidate to win New York state in 40 years.“These encounters with death have not broken my will,” the Republican presidential nominee, 78, told roughly 16,000 fans at the Nassau Coliseum three days after a gunman was found hiding in the bushes of Trump’s namesake Florida golf course as he played a round.“They have really given me a much bigger and stronger mission.

They’ve only hardened my resolve to use my time on Earth to make America great again for all Americans, to put America first,” said Trump, whose ear was grazed with a bullet at a July 13 rally in Pennsylvania.“It was the second one in eight weeks by a violent radical-left mobster,” the ex-president said.“This evil would-be assassin got within a few 100 yards of where I stood.

But thankfully, our outstanding Secret Service agent, and they are outstanding, spotted the barrel of his rifle in the bushes.Can you believe that?”“The reason I’m here,” Trump told the fawning audience, was because “we are going to win New York.”The over-the-moon audience included a woman who flashed her bare breasts while jumping around in the stands — before she was escorted out by police.“That’s the first time in many, many years that a Republican can honestly say it, and we’re going to do it,” added Trump, who made a similar claim in 2020 before losing to then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden by more than 23 percentage points.“We have to do it.

We do it, and the election nationwide is over.We take over the White House and we fix up our country,” the ex-president said to the crowd of New Yorkers and residents of nearby states.“I say to the people of New York: With crime at record levels, with terrorists and criminals pouring in and ...