Trump campaign struggles to contain Puerto Rico October surprise

October 29, 2024

The Trump campaign is struggling to contain an October surprise of its own making, just one week from Election Day, reports The Hill.

A racist remark by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe—one of many warm-up speakers for former President Donald Trump at a rally held on Sunday, October 27 at New York City’s Madison Square Garden—is reverberating hard.

Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats are working to make sure the gibe reaches the ears of as many Latino voters as possible—especially in the swing states that will decide the election.

Republicans, including Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance (Ohio), are trying to minimize the damage—either by distancing themselves from what Hinchcliffe said or by suggesting that a remark made in jest should not spark such outrage.

At the rally, Hinchcliffe referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” He also used other racist tropes, including a reference to Black people and watermelons, and a crude reference linking procreation and immigration.

The comments were slammed as offensive in their own right. But they could also have serious electoral repercussions.

The state is essentially deadlocked, with Trump leading Harris by just four-tenths of a percentage point in the polling average maintained by The Hill/Decision Desk HQ.

There are also tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans in other swing states, including Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina.

Democratic operative Chuck Rocha, an expert on the Latino vote, told this column that he and a super PAC he advises, Nuestro PAC, had sent clips of Hinchcliffe’s remarks “to every Puerto Rican voter in Pennsylvania” on Monday, October 28.

Referring to the uproar and its effect on Trump’s campaign, Rocha added, “It’s an unforced error from a campaign that has no strategic vision. Puerto Rican voters are very sensitive about their island and how you talk about their island—whether they, themselves, live on that island or in Allentown.”

Allentown, about 50 miles north of Philadelphia, is described by The Philadelphia Inquirer as “a majority Latino city and home to 34,000 Puerto Ricans — the eighth-largest Puerto Rican community in America.”

Harris has been turning the screws on Trump over the remark. The vice president on Monday cited Trump’s New York event as having “highlighted a point that I’ve been making throughout this campaign. … He is focused and actually fixated on his grievances, on himself and on dividing our country.”

Her campaign also launched a digital ad aimed at Latino voters that began with Hinchcliffe’s words and asserted that “Puerto Ricans deserve better.”

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), who is of Puerto Rican descent, described the Madison Square Garden rally as a “hate rally” during an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday morning.

On social media, Ocasio-Cortez hit back at Hinchcliffe’s defense that “these people have no sense of humor” and that his joke had been “taken out of context to make it seem racist.”

The New York congresswoman accused the comic of “feeding red-meat racism alongside a throng of other bigots to a frothing crowd.”

The reaction from the Trump campaign—and from the GOP, more broadly—suggests they are well aware of the potential damage from the furor. Trump campaign Senior Adviser Danielle Alvarez told media outlets that the comic’s comments did not “reflect the views” of the former president or his campaign.

Research contact: @thehill