President Donald Trump took his midterm campaign tour to New York’s Long Island on Friday, seeking to boost an old friend running for governor and Republicans looking to flip two light-blue House seats.
A native New Yorker, Trump was in Garden City ostensibly, to help Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive who is running to unseat Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul. Trump, who referred to Blakeman as “a friend of mine, for a long time,” made the visit just two days after the release of a Siena University poll that put his unfavorable rating among likely New York voters at 60 percent.
“I’m thrilled to be back in the state I love, and I do love it. So proud of it, but it’s going in a bad direction,” Trump said, knocking Hochul without naming her. “We’re going to change it around. “We get Bruce in there, we’ll change it around.”
The crowd bellowed “Bruuuuuuuce” in unison, garnering a presidential chuckle.
The GOP campaigner in chief said Blakeman’s record on crime was a feather in his gubernatorial campaign cap.
