Harris Moves To Capitalize On Puerto Rican Outrage Over Racist Joke At Trump Rally

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign moved to capitalize on outrage following a comedian’s racist attempt at a joke targeted at Puerto Ricans at a rally for former President Donald Trump on Sunday, releasing an ad targeted at the community, who have a substantial presence in swing-state Pennsylvania.
The 30-second TV ad, which will air in key swing states, referenced both the “island of garbage” line from comedian Tony Hinchcliffe and Trump’s infamous visit to the U.S. territory in the aftermath of 2017’s devastating hurricanes Irma and Maria, when the then-president chucked rolls of paper towels into a crowd of people who had gathered to receive vital emergency supplies. The Trump administration was widely criticized for what many saw as an inadequate response to the hurricanes, which killed an estimated 3,000 people on the island.
“I will never forget what Donald Trump did. He abandoned the island and offered nothing more than paper towels and insults,” a voiceover from Harris says as images of Trump tossing supplies are shown.
“Puerto Rico deserves better,” the ad says.
Though offensive remarks from Trump and his supporters are nothing new, Harris’ presidential campaign is hoping the specificity of Hinchcliffe’s joke ― targeting a specific community of Latino voters ― and its proximity to the election means it can make a difference in swing states, especially Pennsylvania.
The joke came as part of Trump’s wild rally Sunday night at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. Speeches from a wide variety of Trumpworld operatives and supporters included now-standard attacks on migrants, suggestions that the United States has become a crime-riddled disaster and even echoes of an infamous 1939 Nazi rally at the same venue.
But Hinchcliffe provided the lowlight of the evening with a wildly racist comedy routine.
“These Latinos, they love making babies, too,” said Hinchcliffe, among the many speakers who filled up the five-plus hours before Trump appeared. “There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside, just like they did to our country.”
“There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” he said later, as the crowd seemed to groan and chuckle uncomfortably.
The Trump campaign made a halfhearted attempt to distance itself from the “joke,” releasing a statement later that night saying that it did “not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”
And vice presidential nominee JD Vance tried to do damage control on Monday. “Maybe it’s a stupid, racist joke; maybe it is not,” the Ohio senator said at a rally stop in Wisconsin. “But we have to stop getting so offended at every little thing in the United States of America. I’m so over it.”
But whether or not Vance is “so over it,” it’s clear that many, many other people are not.
A number of high-profile Latino celebrities and public figures quickly slammed the “joke,” including Puerto Rican musicians Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin, all of whom have endorsed Trump’s Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris. “This is what they think of us,” Martin wrote in Spanish on his Instagram story, sharing a clip of Hinchcliffe.
“This was a hate rally,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who is Puerto Rican, said during a Wednesday morning appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” when she was asked about the “island of garbage” remark.
“This was not just a presidential rally, this was not just a campaign rally,” she continued. “Donald Trump and that entire cadre of people up on that stage, Stephen Miller, et cetera, do not respect the law of the United States of America. And they either want to win this election or they are using rhetoric of taking it by force. That is what they mean, and that is what they are doing when they are inciting violence and hatred against Latinos, against Black Americans, against Americans who don’t have children.”
Indeed, the remarks fit into a staple of Trump’s campaign rhetoric: xenophobic fearmongering about immigrants and non-white people. In recent weeks, Vance and Trump have pushed weird and baseless claims that Haitian immigrants are eating household pets and that undocumented immigrants are going to illegally vote in massive numbers in order to steal the election in November. They have even seemed to endorse the white supremacist “great replacement theory,” which asserts there is conspiracy to bring immigrants to the United States to have babies in order to outnumber the white population.
“The Democrat Party has forgotten about Americans,” Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., said at Sunday night’s rally. “Rather than cater to Americans, they decided, you know what, it would just be easier to replace them with people who would be reliable voters.”
Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. As of 2021, there were 5.8 million Puerto Ricans living in the United States, and, notably, they make up a substantial portion of the Latino vote in swing states including Georgia and Pennsylvania.
In Pennsylvania, a pivotal battleground for the 2024 election, Puerto Ricans make up about 8% of the total population. And in Georgia, where in 2021 Trump famously attempted to pressure officials after the election to “find” him the 11,780 votes he needed to win the state, there are around 87,000 Puerto Ricans of voting age.