Puerto Ricans vented their anger after a comedian targeted them with racist jokes at a weekend rally for former US president and the Republican Party’s presidential candidate Donald Trump and some warned he could pay for it on election day.
On the same day that US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Pary’s candidate, unveiled plans to revitalize the US territory, Tony Hinchcliffe called it an “island of garbage” at a major Trump rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
Puerto Ricans living in New York, such as 48-year-old Javier Diaz, said the insults would have “consequences for [former] president Trump.”
Photo: AFP
“I’m going to vote for Harris,” said Diaz, a paralegal living in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood.
Denis Castro, a 60-year-old retiree living in the same area, said the comments made by Hinchcliffe and others at the rally qualified as “racism.”
“You can’t be talking like that,” Castro said, suggesting that many people would be deterred from voting for Trump over the incident.
Residents of Puerto Rico cannot vote in US elections, but the diaspora population living in the 50 states numbers almost 6 million, according to Pew Research Center, and is eligible to vote. It is the largest Hispanic community in the country after Mexicans.
As Trump’s rally unfolded on Sunday, Harris was in key battleground state Pennsylvania, visiting a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia and outlining plans to foster economic growth and create jobs on the island.
“Puerto Ricans deserve a president who sees and invests in [their] strength,” Harris said in a clip published on social media alongside a video of Hinchcliffe.
The US vice president also earned key endorsements from Puerto Rican celebrities, including rapper Bad Bunny, singer Ricky Martin and actress-singer Jennifer Lopez.
Bad Bunny, who has 45 million Instagram followers, reposted a video of Harris attacking Trump’s response to hurricanes that devastated the island while the Republican was president.
“He abandoned the island, tried to block aid after back-to-back devastating hurricanes and offered nothing more than paper towels and insults,” Harris says in the clip.
Harris also launched a new ad targeting Puerto Rican voters, promising “a new way forward.”
Sharing a clip from Trump’s rally, Martin wrote: “This is what they think about us. Vote for Kamala Harris.”
Trump and Harris are in a dead heat in the seven swing states expected to decide the election, so infuriating Latino voters with a week to go before election day could prove damaging for the former president seeking a return to the Oval Office.
Though Trump’s campaign sought to distance itself from Hinchcliffe’s remarks, the Republican billionaire has repeatedly and aggressively attacked migrants, particularly from Latin America, on the campaign trail.
“They invited this rhetoric on their stage for a reason,” Democratic lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is of Puerto Rican descent, said in a message.
Trump surrogates have sought to distance their party and its candidate from the joke.
However, Hinchcliffe, who goes by Kill Tony, fired back against his critics, including Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz.
“These people have no sense of humor. Wild that a vice presidential candidate would take time out of his ‘busy schedule’ to analyze a joke taken out of context to make it seem racist,” Hinchcliffe wrote.
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