NEW YORK, NEW YORK

I wanna wake up in that city, that doesn't sleep
And find I'm king of the hill, top of the list
A number one, king of the hill

According to Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka, speaking on the Lex Fridman podcast, her father would have liked to have been a Broadway producer if he hadn’t chosen business and politics as a career. Watching the final part of his 'Nazi' rally at Madison Square Garden the other night, I couldn’t help but imagine him getting a thrill—in a Max Bialystock kind of way—from having tenor Christopher Macchio sing "New York, New York" to close out his event at MSG in the 'city that never sleeps' with an operatic rendition of that Ol' Blue Eyes classic.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “There are no second acts in American lives,” but he didn’t live long enough to witness the reinvention of Frank Sinatra in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, after his popularity cratered to an all-time low in the late 1940s. Nor did he live to see the third-act story arc of Donald Trump, who is now running for the third time to become the 47th President of the United States. Given Trump’s controversial and polarising status today (a sharp contrast to his decades as a Democrat member and donor where he almost ran for them as President in 1987), one must of course tread carefully when isolating a single moment of his American saga for fear of backlash.

But as third-act finales go, Trump’s return to his beloved New York City—after a period of estrangement due to intensive legal and political pressures—is surely hard to beat. Standing center stage in Madison Square Garden, where countless boxers have fought back from adversity to claim victory, Trump seemed to be having the last laugh over his many adversaries in politics and the media as Macchio delivered his powerful (if occasionally wayward) rendition of “New York, New York” in this historic venue.

Of course, with Trump being “Hitler” (despite having three Jewish grandchildren and being one of the chief architects behind the acclaimed Abraham Accords that was designed to foster peace in the Middle East between Muslims and Jews), it felt like a sort of guilty pleasure to hear a song I’ve always associated with one of my heroes, Frank Sinatra, being sung at what critics have called an outright “Nazi” rally, apparently recalling scenes in 1939 when the German American Bund, a pro-Nazi organisation, held a similar such event at 'the garden'.

Someone recently pointed out that the world would be a much better place if Trump had been a Broadway producer instead of the 'fascist', 'racist' leader for America he is currently.

Who knows, perhaps next week he will be consigned to singing that song 'Prisoners Of Love' from Max Bialystock's jailhouse production and Kamala Harris will be 'shaking off' her victory just like Taylor Swift sang about.

Either way, barring any black swan event, we're going to find out in just seven days.