Donald Trump hosted a rally featuring crude and racist insults made by allies at New York’s Madison Square Garden Sunday.
With just over a week before election day, speakers labelled Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” called Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris “the devil,” and likened the former California attorney general vying to become the first woman and Black woman president to a prostitute.
“I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” said Tony Hinchcliffe, a stand-up comic whose set also included lewd and racist comments about Latinos, Jews and Black people, all key constituencies in the election just nine days away.
His joke was immediately criticized by Harris’s campaign as it competes with Trump to win over Puerto Rican communities in Pennsylvania and other swing states. Puerto Rican music superstar Bad Bunny endorsed Harris shortly after Hinchcliffe’s appearance.
The normally pugnacious Trump campaign took the rare step of distancing itself from Hinchcliffe. “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign,” senior adviser Danielle Alvarez said in a statement.
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But other speakers also made incendiary comments.
Trump’s childhood friend David Rem referred to Harris as “the Antichrist” and “the devil”; businessman Grant Cardone told the crowd that Harris “and her pimp handlers will destroy our country”; Rudy Giuliani, a one-time New York City mayor and former personal lawyer to Trump, falsely claimed that Harris was “on the side of the terrorists” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson called Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, “a Samoan, Malaysian, low-IQ former California prosecutor.”
The event was a surreal spectacle that included former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, TV psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw, politicians including House Speaker Mike Johnson and Reps. Byron Donalds and Elise Stefanik, and an artist who painted a picture of Trump hugging the Empire State Building.
Hogan, returning to the venue where he performed years ago as a professional wrestler, seemed to reprise his character, emerging wearing a giant red, orange and yellow boa and violently waving a large American flag as he posed and danced. He spat on the stage during his speech, flexed his muscles repeatedly and told the audience: “Trump is the only man that can fix this country today.”
And that was all before Trump was to take the stage, running more than two hours late.
After being introduced by his wife, Melania Trump, in a rare public appearance, the former president began by asking the same questions he’s asked at the start of every recent rally: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” The crowd responded with a resounding “No!”
“This election is a choice between whether we’ll have four more years of gross incompetence and failure, or whether we’ll begin the greatest years in the history of our country,” he said.
Trump on Sunday added a new proposal to his list of tax cuts aimed at winning over older adults and blue-collar workers, which already includes vows to end taxes on Social Security benefits, tips and overtime pay: A tax credit for family caregivers.
This comes after Harris has talked about the “sandwich generation” of adults caring for aging parents while raising their children at the same time. Harris has proposed federal funding to cover home care costs for older Americans.
Trump otherwise repeated familiar lines about foreign policy and immigration at his New York rally on Sunday.
On day one I will launch the largest deportation program in American history,” he said. “I will rescue every city and town that has been invaded and conquered.”