Donald Trump, fresh off a blowout loss in Wisconsin, couldn’t be happier to be back home.

Kicking off his New York campaign on Long Island on Wednesday night, Trump reveled in the thundering cheers he received from the more than 10,000 people who packed into Grumman Studios, a soundstage in Bethpage — and in a poll released earlier in the day showing him with more than 50 percent support among Empire State Republican voters.


That’s the magic number in the April 19 primary, in which Trump would pick up all the delegates at play in every congressional district where he takes at least 50 percent of the vote. Moments after he took the stage, his campaign announced a statewide leadership team that included 33 GOP county chairs.

And as he spoke, he rallied his fellow New Yorkers by defining himself as one of them — and portraying Ted Cruz, his most formidable remaining rival whose New York campaign is primarily an effort to keep Trump below the 50 percent mark, as an alien outsider.

“Lyin’ Ted Cruz came today, he couldn’t draw 100 people,” Trump said, taking note of Cruz’s campaign stop Wednesday in the Bronx before reminding the crowd of the Texas senator’s effort months earlier to turn Trump’s New York residency into a weakness with conservative voters in Iowa and across the South.

“Do you remember during the debate, when he started lecturing me on New York values?” Trump said. “Like we’re no good? And I started talking to him about the World Trade Center, the bravery, the incredible bravery of everybody.”

“So, folks, I think you can forget about him.”

At this stage of the GOP nomination fight, Trump cannot actually forget about Cruz, who is consolidating support among establishment Republicans intent on preventing Trump from becoming the party’s nominee.

Parrying Trump, Cruz didn’t back down from his statement about “New York values” when a reporter asked him about it Wednesday.

“Those are the values, the values of the New York liberal politicians that have been hammering the people of this great state,” Cruz said, singling out New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio as the worst offender.

“Every time there is a confrontation between criminals and cops, he sides with the criminals, looters and rioters instead of the police officers,” said Cruz, noting that he was proud of cops who turned their backs on the mayor at a police officer’s funeral last year.

“I cheered for those New York cops and people across America did,” Cruz said.

The Monmouth poll released Wednesday showed Trump with 52 percent support in New York. Cruz, at 17 percent, was trailing John Kasich, who got 25 percent.

Cruz’s internal polls, however, show a somewhat closer race. His campaign hopes to pick off a couple of congressional districts to take delegates away from Trump. Kasich’s campaign, meanwhile, argues that it’s first or second in more than 20 of the 27 districts and has been spending a lot of time on Long Island hoping to win delegates there.

Cruz’s win in Wisconsin on Tuesday night, aided by millions in anti-Trump super PAC spending and a conservative suburban electorate largely unified in opposition to Trump’s candidacy, leaves Trump needing to win roughly 60 percent of the remaining delegates in order to lock up the nomination ahead of the July convention.

But Trump and his team showed no outward signs of concern Wednesday about potentially failing to meet that threshold and facing the prospect of a floor fight in Cleveland.

As Ivanka Trump, less than two weeks removed from giving birth to her third child, took the stage to introduce her father in Bethpage, Trump’s attorney and longtime confidant, Michael Cohen, asserted in an interview on CNN that the Wisconsin loss “hasn’t shaken [Trump] at all.” He also downplayed the importance of Trump reaching the delegate threshold he needs to clinch the nomination outright. “It’s not about Trump getting to 1,237,” Cohen said.

When Trump himself took the podium and stood in front of alternating American and New York flags, he returned to the most well-worn elements of his stump speech: reveling in favorable poll numbers, trashing rivals and the news media, and lamenting that the U.S. “doesn’t win anymore” and isn’t willing to fight, a statement he also cloaked in New York boosterism.

“We don’t fight like people from Long Island,” Trump said. “We don’t fight like people from New York.”

The home crowd, like Trump supporters in other states, is so familiar with his shtick that they repeated and shouted out many of his best-known lines.

When Trump asked the crowd who’s paying for his proposed border wall, their response was immediate and deafening, as shouts of “Mexico” reverberated through the cavernous room, followed moments later by a chant: “Build that wall!”

