Trump is holding a rally in the South Bronx as he tries to woo Black and Hispanic voters

NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump will campaign in one of the most Democratic counties in the nation Thursday, holding a rally in the South Bronx to woo minority voters days before a Manhattan jury will begin deliberations on whether to convict him of felony charges in his criminal hush money trial.

Trump will address supporters in Crotona Park, a public green space in a borough that is among the city’s most diverse and its most impoverished, a change from the majority-white areas where he holds most of his rallies. His campaign said he is expected to draw a crowd of several thousand people.

With Trump confined to New York for the last six weeks, the presumptive Republican nominee’s campaign planned a series of local stops across his hometown before and after court. He visited a bodega in Harlem, dropped by a construction site one morning, and held a photo op at a local firehouse.

The Bronx rally will be Trump’s first event open to the general public as he insists he is making a play to win an overwhelmingly Democratic state that hasn’t backed a Republican for president since Ronald Reagan in 1984. Besides creating a spectacle of rallygoers and protesters, the rally also allows Trump to highlight what he argues are advantages on economic and immigration issues that could cut into key Democratic voting blocs.

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