Video of Donald Trump Applauded at Bronx Barber Shop Takes Off Online

Video from former President Donald Trump’s visit to a New York City barber shop quickly spread online Thursday afternoon, with supporters saying the visit showed he was “authentic.”
The Republican presidential candidate was at the King of Knockouts barbershop in the Bronx, ahead of his Al Smith charity dinner later in the evening.
Trump spent around an hour inside the shop, according to local news reports, speaking with customers and barbers as the New York City Police Department and U.S. Secret Service guarded the area.
Footage was shared on X, formerly Twitter, by one of Trump’s senior advisers Steven Cheung and his deputy director of communications, Margo Martin, with both clips seeing over 250,000 views within a couple of hours.
Supporters then reshared and liked the footage, with some commenting that he was a “man of the people”.
“He’s authentic. We need a lot more of that in American politics,” one user replied.
Some believed the event to have been spontaneous, but owner Javiel Rodriguez told News 12 that the visit had taken a few days to coordinate.
Barbers wore “Make Barbers Great Again” shirts, mimicking Trump’s “Make America Great Again” message frequently seen on merchandise.
Trump’s visit to the Bronx is not the first of this election cycle. He held a rally in the borough in March, where he promised to help Democratic leaders if he was elected for a second term in the White House.
“As soon as I get back into the Oval Office, I am going to pick up the phone and I’m going to call your mayor and your governor, and I’m going to say, ‘this is President Trump and I want to come back and help,'” Trump said at the time. He was a lifelong New Yorker until he officially transferred his residency to Palm Beach, Florida, in 2019.
His attention on New York, which came most recently with a rally on Long Island, is unusual for a Republican candidate when the state is generally a stronghold for the Democratic Party.
The state has voted blue for the past nine presidential elections and Trump lost by a margin of around 33 percent in both 2016 and 2020.
Castle Hill, the neighborhood Trump visited Thursday, sits within New York’s diverse 14th Congressional District, currently represented in the House by Democrat Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
It has had a Democratic Party representative since 1926, and voted blue in at least the last six presidential elections.
For much of the 2024 campaign, President Joe Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, have outpaced Trump state-wide, but there are some areas which lean more Republican, mainly in rural areas outside the city.
Trump was set to head into the city for the Al Smith charity dinner, where he would be the featured speaker, as is common for presidential candidates. Harris said she would skip the event in person to continue campaigning, but has shared a recorded video message that will be played by organizers.