Puerto Ricans cannot vote in general elections despite being U.S. citizens, but they can exert a powerful influence with relatives on the mainland. Phones across the island of 3.2 million people were ringing minutes after the speaker derided the U.S. territory Sunday night, and they still buzzed Monday.
Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris is competing with Trump to win over Puerto Rican communities in Pennsylvania and other swing states. Shortly after stand-up comic Tony Hinchcliffe said that, “I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” Puerto Rican reggaeton superstar Bad Bunny announced he was backing Harris.
After Sunday’s rally, a senior adviser for the Trump campain, Danielle Alvarez, said in a statement that Hinchcliffe’s joke did “not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”
His “set” absolutely reflects the views of Trump and his campaign. That is why he felt comfortable saying those things.
It’s not like the racism of Tony Hinchcliffe was a secret that he kept carefully hidden from public view which caught the organizers by surprise. It took me about a minute of searching who this guy was before landing on the Tony Hinchcliffe Wikipedia page which covers his racist performance in Austin just 3 years ago.
His whole set was also loaded into the teleprompter, so they knew what he was gonna say.
This was my thought. Like I find it VERY hard to believe his set wasn’t at least somewhat vetted beforehand. I cannot imagine they’d just let a comedian go up there and have absolutely no idea what he was going to talk about. That just seems like a total dumbass move so maybe it’s possible with Trump
Plausible deniability, a term coined by reagan’s minions to protect him from being impeached like nixon. It worked, ollie north took the fall
I don’t think I knew who he was back then. I looked it up and he’s not even trying to be clever, there’s no set up or premise, just slur. So cheap.
Edit: timestamp link.