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.

“Under Bruce, think of this: Nassau County has been rated the No. 1 safest county in the United States of America — that’s not bad,” Trump said to applause from the uniformed law enforcement personnel seated behind him, many wearing white ceremonial gloves for an occasion that was billed as an official White House event but that mirrored his campaign rallies.

Hochul, though, contended Friday that crime rates were down across the state. Crime data from the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services showed a 3 percent drop in crimes in New York City between 2024 and 2025 and a 14 percent drop in crimes outside the Big Apple. The crime numbers for both jurisdictions had also declined from 2023.

Blakeman is seen as a decided underdog against Hochul in deep-blue New York, which hasn’t elected a Republican governor since 2002. The same Siena poll found Hochul leading Blakeman by 10 points. Forty percent of likely voters didn’t know or didn’t have an opinion of the Republican nominee, while 33 percent viewed him favorably and 26 percent unfavorably.

Blakeman appeared onstage for a minute Friday and, like other GOP candidates at Trump events, he praised the headliner: “Thank you, Mr. President, for sealing our borders. … There are less and less … moms and dads that are burying their children from fentanyl, the illegal drugs that came through our porous borders during Biden-Harris. … Keep going.”

In his campaign appearances, Blakeman has reportedly largely refrained from mentioning Trump. But New York Democrats say there is no political daylight between the president and his old friend.

“Bruce Blakeman is Trump’s 100 percent MAGA puppet, mimicking everything from his election denialism, to his healthcare cuts, to his price-hiking agenda,” state Democratic Party spokesperson Addison Dick said in a statement.

New York-based GOP strategist Fay Chapin said Friday that Democrats are attempting to tie all Republicans to the president “because they have nothing else to run on.”

“Trump remains an effective turnout tool for Republicans in the suburbs, especially on Long Island. If the attacks are coming anyway, [Blakeman] might as well get the benefits of having the president of the United States come to our neck of the woods,” Chapin said. “I don’t see it backfiring and will only fire up the Republican base in New York, which Blakeman needs in order to win in November.”

Trump’s Empire State campaign stop was his second in three months, following a May 22 event across the Long Island Sound to boost embattled GOP Rep. Mike Lawler in the blue-leaning 17th District. Notably, at that event, Trump mentioned Blakeman and his race more than he did Lawler. 

But Trump’s electoral trend line in Nassau County offers more encouragement for Republicans. After losing the county to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020, Trump carried it in 2024 over Kamala Harris, becoming the first Republican presidential nominee to win Nassau County since George H.W. Bush in 1988.

‘Hellhole’

More recently, some Empire State voters have been in a different mood, with two establishment-aligned House Democrats from New York City losing to primary challengers backed by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

In total, Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist who ran on an avowedly progressive platform last year, successfully backed three candidates pushing similar policy ideas during their primary campaigns.

Former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander easily defeated Rep. Dan Goldman in the 10th District Democratic primary. Rep. Adriano Espaillat, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, lost his primary in the 13th District to community organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier. And a third Mamdani-backed candidate, state Rep. Claire Valdez, defeated Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso in the primary for the 7th District seat being vacated by the retiring Democratic Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez.

Trump has used those victories — and ones by other ultraliberal candidates across the country — to try to paint the entire Democratic Party as being run by communists. Other Republicans have echoed that rhetoric, both in in Washington and on the campaign trail. 

“They continue their war on police and their destruction of the rule of law. The communists want to turn America into a third-world country, into a hellhole of crime and filth,” Trump claimed Friday. “That’s why we have to get Bruce into office. … The radical left Gov. Kathy Hochul has been very, very bad on crime.”

The GOP messenger in chief is banking that those kinds of arguments will help Republican nominees Mike LiPetri and Jeanine Driscoll in their bids to unseat Democratic Reps. Tom Suozzi in the 3rd District and Laura Gillen in the 4th District respectively. Both districts include sizable portions of Nassau County. Democrats are currently favored in both races, according to Inside Elections with Nathan Gonzales, with the 3rd District rated Lean Democratic and the 4th Tilt Democratic.

LiPetri and Driscoll briefly appeared onstage Friday to deliver a few words to the gathered crowd. Joining them were Republican members of the New York delegation, including Reps. Nicole Malliotakis, Nick LaLota and Andrew Garbarino, who also represents a part of Nassau County. Two other House hopefuls from upstate New York spoke briefly Friday as well: Anthony Constantino, who is running to succeed retiring GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik, and Kailee Buller, who is challenging Democrat John W. Mannion and won an endorsement from Trump on Thursday.

Trump seemed eager to sway voters by playing up his personal relationship with the GOP gubernatorial nominee — as well as his ability to defy critics. Trump dubbed Blakeman “a great person” and “a friend of mine” and “a great political leader.”

“When Bruce’s name came up, I said, ‘Yeah. If they give that guy just a little bit of a chance, just a little bit of fair treatment from the fake news and everyone else, he’s going to win,” Trump said.

But the president also ribbed Blakeman as he pondered being forced to choose between sending his old friend to Albany or New York’s Republican congressional delegation back to Washington.

“I don’t know, Bruce, I think I’m going to have to give you up,” the president quipped. “I want I might have to take the congresspeople.”