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subscribe. For months, VICTOR MARTINEZ has been working to make the case for KAMALA HARRIS to Latinos on his Spanish-language radio show in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, acutely aware that DONALD TRUMP
seemed to be making real inroads. But the calls he received on Monday suggested that there might be an 11th-hour shift in this swing region of the most important Electoral College battleground. The stream of racist invective from Trump’s MAGA rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday broke through, especially with voters from Puerto Rico
, which one warm-up speaker described as “a floating island of garbage.” On Monday morning, Martinez, who is of Puerto Rican descent, was flooded with calls, including one from an undecided voter who’d been lukewarm about both presidential candidates until finding out about Sunday’s Trump rally: “They said, 'I'm voting for Kamala Harris.’” That call, he said, was representative of the broader response.
"For Puerto Ricans, this is our October surprise,” Martinez told West Wing Playbook. "This is a gift with a bow from the Trump campaign. This is what we needed to energize the Puerto Rican community, remind the Puerto Rican community of who he is.” Trump’s campaign disavowed — but never repudiated — comedian TONY HINCHCLIFFE
’s comments several hours after he made them. But almost from the moment he became a presidential candidate, Trump’s politics have been characterized by nativist and at times racist rhetoric. Given his cultural and political ubiquity, it’s essentially baked in at this point — new articulations of vitriol from the former president or his high-profile supporters barely move the needle with the electorate. And yet, Harris and her team believe Trump’s MSG rally, which drew comparisons
to a 1939 Nazi rally in the original Manhattan arena, might be different. Hinchcliffe's viral remark about Puerto Rico, which drew a strong reaction from several celebrities and even some Republican lawmakers, could spark the same kind of backlash with Latinos as Trump’s reference months earlier to “Black jobs.” Just as the hammer attack on PAUL PELOSI
in the days before the 2022 midterms clarified for some the dangers of GOP extremism, the totality of racist and offensive comments by a parade of white, mostly male Trump backers could serve as a final reminder of how hate remains closely associated with his political movement.
On Monday, Harris’ operation worked to respond to the Trump rally in surround sound, holding a press conference with surrogates in Philadelphia, cutting a new digital ad highlighting the remarks and having the candidate herself react to the comments early in the day. Harris told reporters that the rally reflected Trump’s own dark appeals to people’s baser instincts.
“He is focused and actually fixated on his grievances, on himself and on dividing our country. And it is not in any way something that will strengthen the American family, the American worker,” Harris said on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews before leaving Washington for a day of events in Michigan.
“What he did last night is not a discovery. It is just more of the same, and maybe more vivid than usual,” she continued. “Donald Trump spends full time trying to have Americans point their finger at each other, fans the fuel of hatred and division and that’s why people are exhausted with him.” There were all kinds of clips from the rally pinging around the internet on Sunday and into Monday — like former Fox News host TUCKER CARLSON
calling Harris a “Samoan-Malaysian, low I.Q., former California prosecutor” (she’s not Samoan or Malaysian), or former adviser STEPHEN MILLER declaring that “America is for Americans — and Americans only.” But, more than anything else, it's the Puerto Rico remark that could have an impact in the final eight days of the campaign.
Harris, in her tarmac gaggle, noted that Hinchcliffe’s remark wasn’t much different than many of Trump’s own recent comments: describing America as a “garbage can,” vowing to root out “the enemy within” and declaring that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country. By that time, a number of Puerto Rican celebrities from BAD BUNNY to LUIS FONSI and
JENNIFER LOPEZ had posted on social media — with around 400 million combined followers between them — about Trump’s rally and Hinchcliffe’s disparagement of the island. Bad Bunny, in fact, posted Harris’ own video aimed at Puerto Ricans on his Instagram account (three times!) on Sunday just as Trump’s rally was concluding, later confirming that he was officially backing the vice president’s campaign. NATE SILVER
noted in a piece assessing the rally’s impact that Google searches for Hinchcliffe were surpassing those for TAYLOR SWIFT, writing that a final-week news cycle focused largely on Trump and the most unseemly aspects of his movement “could throw Harris a lifeline.” Trump is scheduled to campaign in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday. The city’s mayor, MATTHEW TUERK
, told West Wing Playbook that the MSG rally on Sunday “was the worst own-goal in history” and might spur the higher turnout among Latinos that Democrats are banking on. "I've been talking to a variety of Spanish-language media, and I've said to them, this is the wake-up call. Everyone's doing a double take,” said Tuerk, who is of Cuban descent and the first Latino mayor in Allentown’s history.
"I think Puerto Rican voters broadly speaking were leaning toward Harris already or had already voted for her,” he continued. “Anybody who had their doubts, their doubts were based on the economy, maybe some internalized sexism. But I think the people of Allentown, the people of Puerto Rico — we are proud people. When you insult us, it gets our dander up. It pisses us off. We don't typically mouth off — we take some action." MESSAGE US — Are you
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