US President-elect Donald Trump returned triumphantly to the Madison Square Garden (MSG) with his entourage of high-level nominees and advisers for a mixed martial arts championship.
He was welcomed with chants of "USA, USA!'' the rallying cry of his campaign.
His first public appearance since winning the election was to visit the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), dominated by a crowd of fans of mixed martial arts that reflects the most hard-core of his supporters, young men although people of other ethnicities in the crown.
He brought along Tulsi Gabbard, his nominee for director of national intelligence, and his leaders for the proposed Office of Government Efficiency, Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health secretary pick, and his now ever-present adviser Elon Musk, the multi-billionaire entrepreneur, and Vivek Ramaswamy, the pharmaceutical multimillionaire.
His sentencing, which was ordered on Tuesday in the city on his conviction in the "hush money" case, was yesterday postponed to November 26, as his lawyers and local prosecutors, as well as the judge, grapple with the constitutional and political implications of sentencing a man who will take over as the President in about two months.
The MSG was filled with a huge rally organized by Trump one week ahead of the election, which forecasted the expansion of his base among the minorities and cementation of it among the working class.
Though Kamala Harris won the deep blue city of San Francisco, Vice President Trump had strengthened his percentage of votes here by 7 percent to 30 percent from the 23 percent he had won against President Biden in 2020—a pattern seen across the country that catapulted him to the presidency in terms of the popular votes as well as those for the Electoral College.
UFC champion Jon Jones presented the championship belt with Trump and told the cheering crowd, "I also wanna say a big, big thank you to President Donald Trump for being here tonight".
Trump did not speak at the function.
Mixed martial arts, or MMA, is a nearly no-holds-barred, earthy form of combat where the participants may employ boxing, wrestling, and martial arts.
Jones won it with a knock-out kick on his rival Stipe Miocic.
Steven Cheung is another of Trump's nominees for White House director of communications; he also previously held the position at the UFC.
The New York visit was his second outing from his Florida mansion, Mar-a-Lago, where he has been working on his transition.
On Wednesday, he traveled to Washington to meet with Biden.
He had addressed a mammoth rally in 2014 during his visit to New York on the occasion of the first national election victory.
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