Urged by some allies to apologize for racist comments made by speakers at his weekend rally, Donald Trump took the opposite approach on Tuesday, saying it was an “honor to be involved” in such an event and calling the scene a “lovefest” — the same term he has used to describe the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Trump gathered supporters and reporters to his Mar-a-Lago resort two days after a massive rally at Madison Square Garden featured a number of crude remarks by various speakers, including a set by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe in which he joked that Puerto Rico was a “floating island of garbage.” Some of Trump’s top Republican allies have condemned the remarks, and his campaign took the rare step of publicly distancing itself from Hinchcliffe’s joke, though not the other comments.
But given the opportunity to apologize at multiple events and in interviews Tuesday, Trump instead leaned in. Speaking at his Florida resort, he said that “there’s never been an event so beautiful” as his Sunday rally in his hometown of New York.
“The love in that room. It was breathtaking,” he said. “It was like a lovefest, an absolute lovefest. And it was my honor to be involved.”
Get top local stories in Connecticut delivered to you every morning. Sign up for NBC Connecticut's News Headlines newsletter.
On Tuesday night, he told Fox News' Sean Hannity that he knows nothing about Hinchcliffe but said, “I can’t imagine it’s a big deal.” He later agreed, though, that “probably he shouldn’t have been there.”
With just a week before Election Day, some Trump allies have voiced alarm that the rally, which was supposed to highlight the Republican presidential nominee’s closing message in grand New York fashion, has instead served as a distraction and even a liability, given the electoral importance of Puerto Ricans who live in Pennsylvania and other key swing states.
“This is not a time to have anyone criticize Puerto Rico or Latinos,” former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who challenged Trump for the GOP presidential nomination and later endorsed him, said in an interview with Fox News Channel.
Trump later held a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a city with a large Hispanic population, where Puerto Rico’s shadow U.S. senator, Zoraida Buxo, joined him and defended the former president's record.
“We need this man to be our commander in chief,” said Buxo, who cannot vote in the Senate because Puerto Rico is not a state. “He will make us feel safe and he will protect us.”
Still, there was anger in Allentown. Ivet Figueroa, 61, stood outside the rally venue holding a trash can with the words “Trash Trump” on it.
She said of the insult and Trump:: “The person who said it was vetted by him. So that’s what he allowed, so he has to take responsibility for what he said. Now it’s too late for saying ‘sorry.’ I don’t want an apology, I want justice, and justice is on Nov. 5.”
The fallout from the Madison Square Garden event risked highlighting voters’ concerns about Trump’s rhetoric and penchant for controversy in the closing stretch as both campaigns are scrambling for votes. Speakers at the rally also made racist comments targeting Latinos, Black people, Jews and Palestinians, along with sexist insults directed at Trump’s Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
In an interview with ABC News earlier Tuesday, Trump claimed to not know Hinchcliffe but did not denounce what he said.
“I don’t know him. Someone put him up there. I don’t know who he is,” Trump said, according to the network, insisting that he hadn’t heard Hinchcliffe’s comments. When asked what he made of them, Trump “did not take the opportunity to denounce them, repeating that he didn’t hear the comments,” ABC reported.
In the Hannity interview, Trump said people were trying to make the comedian's appearance into a “big deal” when it “has nothing to do with the party, has nothing to do with us.”
Asked later in the interview whether he wished the comic wasn't there, Trump said, “Yeah, I mean I don’t know if it’s a big deal or not, but I don’t want anybody making nasty jokes or stupid jokes." He added, “Probably he shouldn’t have been there, yeah.”
Later Tuesday, President Joe Biden, on a call organized by the Hispanic advocacy group Voto Latino, denounced the comic's joke and said, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters." He later tried to clarify his comment, saying he was talking about “the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter.”
The comments from the Madison Square Garden rally have drawn outrage from Puerto Rican leaders.
The archbishop of Puerto Rico called on Trump to disavow them, saying it wasn’t enough for the campaign to say the joke didn't reflect Trump’s views. The president of Puerto Rico’s Republican Party called the “poor attempt at comedy” by Hinchcliffe “disgraceful, ignorant and totally reprehensible.”
In Pennsylvania, where Trump campaigned Tuesday night, the Latino eligible voter population has nearly tripled since 2000. More than half of those are Puerto Rican voters.
Angelo Ortega, a longtime Allentown resident and former Republican who’s planning to vote for Harris, said he couldn’t believe what he’d heard about Trump’s rally.
“I don’t know if my jaw dropped or I was just so irritated, angry. I didn’t know what to feel,” said Ortega, who was born in New York but whose father came from Puerto Rico. Ortega has been campaigning for Harris and said he knows of at least one Hispanic GOP voter planning to switch from Trump to Harris as a result of Hinchcliffe’s comments.
“They’ve had it. They’ve had it. They were listening to (Trump), but they said they think that that was like the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Ortega, a member of the Make the Road PA advocacy group.
Still, some voters of Puerto Rican descent weren't fazed. Maricelis Torres, 24, a waitress studying to be a radiologist, waited to get into the Allentown rally and said she and her family laughed at Hinchcliffe's joke.
“If you don’t understand humor, then that’s what I’m saying, people are way too soft these days,” said Torres, whose father is from the island.
The Harris campaign has released an ad that will run online in battleground states targeting Puerto Rican voters and highlighting the comedian’s remarks.
At a roundtable outside Philadelphia on Tuesday afternoon, Trump got some praise from a retired occupational therapist from Puerto Rico, Maribel Valdez. “Puerto Rico stands behind you, and Puerto Rico loves you,” Valdez told him.
Trump thanked her and reminisced about his administration’s efforts to help the island after storms. “I think no president has ever done more for Puerto Rico than I have,” responded Trump, who delayed the release of billions of dollars in assistance to repair years-old hurricane damage in Puerto Rico until shortly before the 2020 election.
