Speakers at six-hour Trump rally in New York insult Puerto Ricans and mock Harris’ race

NEW YORK – Former President Donald Trump promised “America’s new golden age” of closed borders and world peace as he gathered a large crowd at Madison Square Garden in his hometown in the final leg of the 2024 presidential contest against Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump led the more than six-hour rally with nearly 30 speakers, some of whom insulted Latinos and attacked Democratic candidate Harris over her race, and vowed to “make America great again, and it will happen soon.”

“It’s going to be America first, and it’s going to happen like no one has ever seen before,” Trump said, adding: “We will not be overrun, we will not be conquered. We will be a free and proud nation again. Everyone will prosper.”

But the event also drew intense criticism from Democrats over comments from comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who spoke before Trump in the afternoon hours and called Puerto Rico currently a “floating island of trash in the middle of the ocean.”

The joke could be politically problematic for Republicans, who have been pursuit of the Latino voteand especially in the swing state of Pennsylvania, where hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans live.

According to a Pew Research Center, there are 5.6 million Puerto Ricans living in the United States analysis of census data, and about 8% of them live in Pennsylvania.

Hinchcliffe, who hosts a podcast called “Kill Tony,” also said Latinos “like making babies” and made a lewd joke about them.

Republican U.S. Senator Rick Scott of Florida, whose state is also home to hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans, wrote on X: “It’s not funny and it’s not true. Puerto Ricans are great people and great Americans!”

Democrats brought in U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Puerto Rican, and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, to deliver the joke. “When you have some asshole calling Puerto Rico floating trash… that’s what they think about everyone who makes less money than them,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

Harris presented a new policy proposal in Philadelphia on Sunday focused in Puerto Rico.

The former president’s 80-minute speech was mostly his standard campaign promises and talk, though he added one proposal to his list of tax breaks — a benefit for those who care for sick or elderly relatives at home. Harris too introduced a home care policy for seniors earlier in October.

Trump repeated his popular promises to “get transgender insanity out of our schools,” “stop the invasion” at the border and restore peace to Ukraine and the Middle East, which he claims would never have been torn by war if he had been in the country. office.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, told the crowd that his time campaigning for Trump across the country has revealed that “something very powerful is happening among the grassroots.”

“I’m telling you, there’s an energy that we haven’t seen before,” Johnson said.

NYC takes a detour

Trump held the rally nine days before polls close on November 5. Nearly 42 million Americans have already voted early, in person or by mail, in more than two dozen states, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab. early voting tracker.

Trump’s stop in New York took a detour from the seven battleground states in the spotlight of this election: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. His campaign also announced two upcoming stops Sunday in New Mexico and Virginia during the final week of the contest.

Yet both candidates reached Pennsylvania again this weekend, with Trump as the result comments Saturday at Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania, and Harris spent Sunday collect a crowd in Philadelphia.

Harris spoke to the press in Philadelphia, a city she described as “a very important part of our path to victory.”

“I’m very optimistic about the enthusiasm here and the commitment that people of all backgrounds have to vote and really invest in the future of our country,” Harris told reporters.

The vice president criticized Trump for using “dark and divisive language,” including his comments this week that America is the “garbage bin of the world.”

“I think people are ready to turn the page,” she said.

Tucker Carlson goes after Harris

Numerous speakers attacked Harris’ record — a standard feature of political rallies — but some comments cited her race. Trump’s childhood best friend, David Rem, held a crucifix and told the crowd that Harris was the “antichrist.”

Conservative media personality Tucker Carlson described Harris as a “Samoan Malaysian former prosecutor with a low IQ in California,” while imagining a scenario in which Democrats consider their candidate after the election.

“Donald Trump has made it possible for the rest of us to tell the truth about the world around us,” Carlson said earlier in his speech.

Harris’ mother was Indian and her father is Jamaican. Trump has previously questioned her race during his interview with the National Association of Black Journalists.

Carlson, who was fired by Fox News in April 2023, accused Democrats of telling “lies” and said in a mocking voice: “Jan. It was an uprising, they were unarmed, but it was a whole uprising.”

The violent attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 by thousands of Trump supporters came after the former president refused for months to concede the 2020 presidential election, which President Joe Biden won.

Twenty-eight speakers preceded Trump starting at just after 2 p.m. and held court hearings until the former president took the stage at 7:13 p.m. Trump’s wife, Melania, introduced him in a rare campaign rally and spoke briefly.

The lineup included Death Row Records founder, TV personality Dr. Pro wrestling’s Phil and Hulk Hogan and Dana White – some of whom spoke at the four-day Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, whose super PAC has poured more than $75 million into the campaign, was among the speakers.

Musk told the crowd to vote early and that he wanted to see a “huge landslide victory.”

“Make the margin of victory so big that you know what can’t happen,” he said, referring to debunked claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

Focus on New York

The day was all about the mystique of New York and Trump’s ties with it. New York City is not only where Trump grew up and followed his father’s path into the real estate industry, but now also where he has been convicted in May in a Manhattan court on 34 state felonies stemming from a hush-money scheme involving a porn star.

A vendor handing out campaign items Sunday morning to supporters waiting to enter Madison Square Garden promoted a hat that read “I’m Voting for the Convicted Felon.”

Several speakers credited Trump with changing New York City’s skyline. The 58-story Trump Tower sits on 5th Avenue in downtown Manhattan, among his other real estate holdings on the island.

“New York City made Donald Trump, but Donald Trump also made New York City,” said Lara Trump, Trump’s daughter-in-law and co-chair of the Republican National Committee.

Howard Lutnick, chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and co-chair of the Trump campaign’s “transition team,” told the story of losing just over 650 of his employees in the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, coined by the known terrorist Osama. Bin Laden.

“We must elect Donald J. Trump as president because we must crush jihad,” Lutnick said.

Lutnick joked with Musk on stage, estimating that the pair could potentially cut $2 trillion in federal spending under a second Trump administration. Trump has chosen the duo to lead a government efficiency commission, if elected.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who took a leading role in spreading Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 election, received a standing ovation from the packed room.

He accused Biden and Harris of spreading “socialism, fascism and communism.”

Giuliani, a key player in Trump’s false claim that he won the 2020 election, appeared at the rally just days after a federal judge in New York ordered him to turn over his apartment and valuables to election workers in Georgia, of whom he was found guilty of defamation.

Giuliani, along with a handful of other speakers, also suggested that Democrats are responsible for the two assassination attempts on Trump.

“I’m not going to conspire,” Giuliani said, “but it’s funny that they tried to do everything else, and now they’re trying to kill him.”

The accusation was a theme throughout the day. Speaker after speaker implied or outright blamed Democrats for the two attempts on Trump’s life, without naming the perpetrators. The shooter on the first attempt was killed by law enforcement, and the second, who never shot Trump, has been charged in Florida; neither appears to have ties to the Democrats.

Trump focused some of his comments on New York City, referencing his youth and adding that he felt sympathy for the city’s indicted mayor, Eric Adams.

The meeting ended not with Trump’s signature closing song “YMCA” by the Village People, but with a live rendition of “New York, New York” by Christopher Macchio.