Trump says his rally in New York, marked by crude and racist insults, was "an absolute love fest."

Adriana Gomez Licon and Michelle L. Price
| Associated press

Palm Beach, FL. – Urged by some allies to apologize for racist comments from 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 January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.

Trump gathered supporters and reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort two days after a massive rally at Madison Square Garden featured a number of crude comments from several speakers, including one set by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe in which he joked that Puerto Rico was a “ floating island of waste.” Some of Trump’s key Republican allies condemned the comments, and his campaign took the rare step of publicly distancing itself from Hinchcliffe’s joke, but not from the other comments.

But when given the chance to apologize, both at Mar-a-Lago and in an earlier ABC interview, Trump instead leaned forward. Speaking at his resort in Florida, he said that “there has never been such a beautiful event” as his Sunday meeting at his resort. birthplace New York.

“The love in that room. It was breathtaking,” he said. “It was like a love fest, an absolute love fest. And it was an honor for me to be involved.”

Just a week before Election Day, some Trump allies have expressed alarm that the rally, which was supposed to highlight the Republican presidential candidate’s final message in grand New York fashion, has instead served as a distraction and even a burden, given the electoral importance of Puerto Ricans living in Pennsylvania and other key swing states.

Trump was expected to hold a rally later Tuesday in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a city with a large Hispanic population, where Puerto Rico’s shadow U.S. senator, Zoraida Buxo, will join him, according to a campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of an election campaign. formal announcement.

Buxo, who has no vote in the Senate because Puerto Rico is not a state, expressed her support for Trump in a post on the social media site X. She said Trump is the “strong leader” Puerto Rico needs.

The fallout from the event at Madison Square Garden threatened to underscore voters’ concerns about Trump’s rhetoric and propensity for controversy in the closing stages as both campaigns battle for votes. Speakers at the rally also made racist comments against Latinos, black people, Jews and Palestinians, along with sexist insults against Trump’s Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

On Tuesday, Trump tried to move past the controversy and return to Harris, cementing his rival’s record on the border and inflation, saying that “on issue after issue they broke it” and “I’m going fixing and repairing. it’s very fast.”

Trump, who did not take questions at the event, accused Harris of waging a “campaign of absolute hatred” and claimed she “keeps talking about Hitler and the Nazis because her record is terrible.”

Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff said in recent interviews with The New York Times and The Atlantic that former President Adolf Hitler praised Hitler during his time in office and suggested the Nazi leader “did some good things.”

In an interview with ABC News earlier Tuesday, Trump tried to distance himself from Hinchcliffe but did not denounce what he said.

‘I don’t know him. Someone put it there. I don’t know who he is,” Trump said, according to the network, insisting he had not heard Hinchcliffe’s comments. When asked what he thought, Trump “did not take the opportunity to denounce them and reiterated that he had not heard the comments,” ABC reported.

The comments have sparked outrage among Puerto Rican leaders.

The Archbishop of Puerto Rico called on Trump to disown them, saying it was not enough for the campaign to say the joke did not reflect Trump’s views. The president of Puerto Rico’s Republican Party called Hinchcliffe’s “poor attempt at comedy” “disgraceful, ignorant and totally reprehensible.”

In Pennsylvania, where Trump was scheduled to campaign later Tuesday, the population of Latino voters has nearly tripled since 2000. More than half of those are Puerto Rican voters.

Angelo Ortega, a longtime Allentown resident and former Republican who plans to vote for Harris this time, said he couldn’t believe what he heard about Trump’s rally.

“I don’t know if my jaw dropped or if I was just so irritated and angry. I didn’t know what to feel,” said Ortega, who was born in New York but whose father was from Puerto Rico. Ortega has campaigned for Harris and said he is aware of at least one Hispanic Republican voter who plans to switch from Trump to Harris as a result of Hinchcliffe’s comments.

‘They’ve had it. They’ve had it. They listened to (Trump), but they said they thought this was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Ortega, a member of the advocacy group Make the Road PA.

Still, some Republican Puerto Ricans were unimpressed. Lydia Maldonado, who attended Trump’s event in Florida on Tuesday, said in Spanish that it was important to note that the former president was not the one who made the comment about Puerto Rico.

“He’s a comedian. He tries to be funny and says a lot of nonsense. The man is stupid. He has no idea about Puerto Rico and doesn’t know our culture. He screwed up. We have to forgive and let it go,” said Maldonado, a Puerto Rican.

The Harris campaign has released an ad that will run online in battleground states targeting Puerto Rican voters and highlighting the comedian’s comments.

___

Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in New York, Dánica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Nicholas Riccardi in Denver and Michael Rubinkam in Allentown, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.