Within the remaining days of the marketing campaign, each Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump’s camps have been making an attempt to enchantment to Latino voters—a rising, key, and politically non-monolithic citizens.
What has been a constant competitors for these votes all through the whole thing of the 2024 election cycle intensified final week when Trump surrogate and stand-up comedian Tony Hinchcliffe referred to Puerto Rico as “rubbish” throughout his time slot on the Madison Sq. Backyard MAGA rally on Sunday.
“I don’t know in the event you guys know this, however there’s actually a floating island of rubbish in the course of the ocean proper now,” Hinchcliffe, who has said comedians ought to by no means apologize, started. “I feel it’s known as Puerto Rico.” Throughout his 12-minute remarks, Hinchcliffe additionally said, “These Latinos, they love making infants, too, simply know that. They do. They do. There’s no pulling out. They don’t try this. They arrive inside, identical to they did to our nation.”
The pushback from Puerto Ricans throughout America was instantaneous. Consultant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, who first responded to the feedback whereas on a Twitch stream with Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, mentioned it was “tremendous upsetting,” including that her household is from Puerto Rico.
“The factor that’s so tousled that I want extra folks understood, is that the issues that they do in Puerto Rico are a testing floor for the insurance policies and the horrors that they want … that they do unveil in working-class communities throughout america,” Ocasio-Cortez mentioned. “When you might have some a-hole calling Puerto Rico ‘floating rubbish,’ know that that’s what they consider you.”
Celebrities with Puerto Rican heritage, together with Jennifer Lopez and Dangerous Bunny, joined in, denouncing the remarks and expressing love for the islands—whose residents cannot vote within the presidential election regardless of being Americans.
“You do know he’s a COMEDIAN, and these are JOKES, proper????” the Trump marketing campaign’s nationwide press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote in an e mail to TIME journal. “The joke doesn’t replicate the views of President Trump or the marketing campaign,” senior advisor Danielle Alvarez mentioned in a press release, additionally to TIME.
“No one loves our Latino group and our Puerto Rican group greater than I do,” Trump said at a rally in Allentown, a majority Latino town.
“Puerto Rico is house to among the most proficient, progressive, and bold folks in our nation. And Puerto Ricans deserve a president who sees and invests in that power,” Harris mentioned in a video posted the identical day as Trump’s MSG rally. “I’ll always remember what Donald Trump did and what he didn’t do when Puerto Rico wanted a caring and a reliable chief. He deserted the island.”
