Trump swaps swing states for Madison Square Garden rally in NYC: Live updates

JD Vance appeared on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, facing tough questioning from Jake Tapper about Donald Trump’s comments about “the enemy within” and his suggestion that he may use the US military to go after his opponents.

Former Republican Representative Liz Cheney, who has endorsed Kamala Harris, slammed Vance’s response, saying: “What we just watched is what it looks like when someone has gotta go through unbelievable contortions to try to find a way to defend the person that JD Vance himself called America’s Hitler.”

It’s hard to estimate the crowd size roughly two hours before the doors open at Madison Square Garden, but a wide line is packed from the entrance on Seventh Avenue and filling half of the street so far on 33rd Street, across from the Penn Station entrance.

The street is fully pedestrian today, with NYPD barricades on either side, under midtown landmarks like Sbarro and Target.

There’s a sea of red MAGA hats and a few flags waving above the crowd.

We’re supposed to be inside at noon.

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will crisscross the country to visit all seven battleground states in the coming days, part of a final blitz before the end of the presidential campaign.

The Democratic presidential nominee will spend Sunday in Philadelphia, attending church services in the morning and visiting a barbershop. Harris also plans to stop at a Puerto Rican restaurant and a youth basketball facility.

On Monday, Walz, who is Minnesota’s governor and Harris’ running mate, will campaign in Manitowoc and Waukesha in Wisconsin before heading to Ann Arbor, Michigan for a joint rally with Harris. The singer Maggie Rogers is scheduled to perform.

The Independent’s Ariana Baio and Alex Woodward are outside Madison Square Garden ahead of Trump’s rally later on Sunday.

Vendors outside the arena have switched their regular wares for MAGA products.

Two people were seen impersonating Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un – a dictator that Trump has often complimented.

A Nigel Farage-inspired bid to persuade Donald Trump to veto Keir Starmer’s controversial Chagos Islands deal can be revealed today.

The Independent has seen legal advice on Starmer’s controversial deal to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius sent to Mr Trump that was requested after the Reform UK leader raised the issue directly with the former president’s team.

The advice was drawn up by legal experts who worked alongside Mr Farage in the Brexit campaign.

Mr Farage says he was not directly involved in the legal advice but his links with Trump are believed to have played a vital part in the initiative.

The aim of Farage and his allies is to persuade Trump to block the deal if he becomes president.

An increasing number of Americans say Donald Trump is too old to be president — but not as many as when President Joe Biden faced similar concerns about his age over the summer.

A new poll from YouGov found that 44 percent said Trump, at age 78, is too old to lead the executive branch. That figure is up from 35 percent who said the same in a similar February survey.

Along the same lines, the number of people who said he’s not too old dropped from 53 percent in February to 46 percent in October.

Those figures are compared to President Biden, 81, who dropped out of the 2024 presidential campaign and endorsed Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. In a similar poll in February, 63 percent of respondents said Biden was too old to be president. That figure jumped to 70 percent in July.

Harris and her running-mate are set to barnstorm through the contested states for a series of rallies focused on getting out the vote and “harnessing the energy of these events to mobilize voters to go to the polls,” according to the Harris-Walz campaign.

The Trump campaign has sent out the speaker list for the former president’s Sunday rally at Madison Square Garden.

Doors are at noon, with the former president due to speak at around 5pm ET.

• Sen. JD Vance
• Speaker Mike Johnson
• Rep. Elise Stefanik
• Rep. Byron Donalds
• Tulsi Gabbard
• Rudy Giuliani
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
• Lara Trump
• Eric Trump
• Donald Trump Jr.
• Elon Musk
• Dan Scavino
• Stephen Miller
• Dana White
• Tucker Carlson
• Brooke Rollins
• Steve Witkoff
• Howard Lutnick
• Grant Cardone
• Sergio Gor
• Michael Harris Jr.
• Tiffany Justice
• Lee Greenwood
• Christopher Macchio
• Mary Millben
• Sid Rosenberg
• Kill Tony
• Scott Lobaido
• David Rem

With just over a week left before Election Day, a historic gender gap is emerging that may decide whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris wins the White House.

Recent national polling has noted that women decisively backed the vice president 53 percent to 36 over her Republican rival.