With just eight days left until the election, Puerto Rico, an Associated State that does not vote in US elections, has become a hot issue in the US election campaign. Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s comment at Donald Trump’s rally on Sunday in New York (“there’s an island of garbage floating in the Atlantic, I think it’s called Puerto Rico”), and the entire electoral event at Madison Square Garden, packed of insults and aggressive language, have become a sudden burden for the Republican candidate. Also in a gift as unexpected as it was timely for Democrat Kamala Harris, who in recent days had seen the small distance she had over her rival in the polls shrink.
The phrase about Puerto Rico also joined another crude joke about the reproductive practices of the Latino community. The joke could end up costing the Republican candidate dearly. The Puerto Rican community can vote when they reside in the United States, and they are very numerous in states such as Florida or New York. Six million Puerto Ricans live in the mainland United States. But, above all, it is key in Pennsylvania, the largest of the seven hinge states (the list is completed with Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin): there it represents around 620,000 inhabitants, out of a total of 13 million. One million people identify as Latino, according to census data. When the polls show an almost absolute tie between Harris and Trump, any change in voting intention among this electorate can be decisive. And that community, this Monday, was red hot with anger.
The Republican campaign has condemned Hinchliffe’s joke about Puerto Rico, but not the rest of the insults uttered during the rally attended by nearly 19,000 people, according to organizers. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani referred to Palestinians as “people who are taught to kill Americans when they are two years old.” Steve Miller, Trump’s former immigration advisor, claimed: “America is only for Americans,” a motto used by the Ku Klux Klan. Host Tucker Carlson alluded to the conspiracy theory that claims that the elites want to replace the majority of the white population in the United States with immigrants: “People know, in a country taken over by a ruling class that despises them and their values and their history… to the point that they are trying to replace him, they know that there is someone who loves them, and that is Donald Trump.”
Hinchcliffe himself also distributed wax among other minorities. Regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, he suggested that it be resolved with a game of “rock, paper, scissors.” “We know that the Palestinians will choose the stone, and the Jews find it difficult to throw paper,” he said, making a gesture of throwing bills with his hand. He also pointed to someone in the audience to ask, “Who is that? A black man with a lamp on his head? Just kidding, he’s a friend. “We were at a Halloween party yesterday, cutting watermelons together.” Watermelons are used in some contexts in the US as a racist reference.
The Trump campaign already had to come out on Sunday to deny that the comedian’s comments represented the candidate’s opinion. This Monday, the former president’s spokesperson Karolyne Leavitt stressed in statements to the Fox News network that it was “a comedian making a joke in bad taste.” “It’s a shame that the media focuses on a single joke from a comedian, instead of all the truths that were repeated during the rally,” he declared.
Harris: “Fan the flames of division”
For her part, Harris referred in statements to the press to the phrase and the general tone of the rally, where the participants who preceded Trump launched an avalanche of racist comments and insults towards minorities and Democratic supporters. “It’s more of the same, perhaps more vivid than normal,” said the Democratic candidate. “It is absolutely something that is intended to fan the flames of division in this country.”
The rally, and Hinchcliffe’s comment, came just hours after Harris had visited a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia and proposed what he called “an aid group focused on Puerto Rico.” Hours later, Puerto Rican celebrities like Bad Bunny shared the vice president’s speech on their social networks. Bad Bunny, several times.
For the Puerto Rican community it was raining. The rally once again recalled how Donald Trump’s White House managed the catastrophe caused in Puerto Rico by the passage of the hurricane Mariawhich left the island without power for weeks. The then president suspended federal aid to the island and, when he went there to distribute it, he threw rolls of toilet paper to those affected.
“These are the type of mistakes that you cannot allow in an electoral campaign,” said the Puerto Rican evangelical pastor Luis Zamot, who has lived for more than two decades on the outskirts of Philadelphia – the great metropolis of Pennsylvania –, who describes himself as conservative ideology and who in the past has voted Republican. “It is a total repudiation, extremely offensive” against the Puerto Rican community and the Latino community, he considered.
“Kamala comes with her speech and then, minutes later, this individual comes with this expression, which looks very intentional. If you heard Kamala say what she said, you should have presented a counteroffer, saying ‘the vice president said this, but we help Puerto Rico and we are going to do something better,’ Zamot pointed out.
Social networks, comments in groups and conversations between acquaintances burned in the State with phrases of condemnation and disbelief about Hinchcliffe’s jokes. “It has unleashed a tsunami of indignation,” summarized Zamot.
Not only Hinchcliffe, but the Republican candidate himself, should call a press conference “as soon as possible, preferably today” to try to appease voters’ anger, the pastor believes. “It has become a tsunami against him that could cost Republican candidate Donald Trump the elections, because public opinion has turned, this is a massive insult,” said Zamot, who claimed that this Monday his phone was smoking with the comments of family, faithful and acquaintances. “This is going to have an impact on voting intentions, I am already beginning to detect it among mine,” he warned.
The statement of disapproval of the Republican campaign “is not enough,” considers the evangelical pastor. “For me, someone from the campaign to tell me that this is not President Trump’s opinion is not worth it to me. Trump himself has to tell me this, in public.”
He himself, a month ago, was one of those undecided in these elections in the United States, someone who had not yet decided between Trump or his Democratic rival. Then he assured that he would wait until the last moment to mark his ballot, and would above all take into account the interests of his community. Now, he maintains, it is clear to him. What happened on Sunday at Madison Square Garden has helped him clarify. “And who to vote for.”
