electoralism

Tony Hinchcliffe

2024 Donald Trump rally

On October 27, 2024, Hinchcliffe spoke at a Donald Trump campaign rally in Madison Square Garden, where he denigrated Puerto Rico as a "floating island of garbage". He expressed disdain for migrants, and stated "these Latinos, they love making babies, they do. There's no pulling out. They don't do that, they come inside, just like they do to our country", and invoked several racist stereotypes.

Hinchcliffe made remarks about carving watermelons with Black people and Palestinians throwing rocks in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and alluded to economic antisemitism by joking that "Jews have a hard time throwing that paper." Hinchcliffe's remarks were widely criticized as racist, including by prominent politicians such as Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, who called him a "jackwad", and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is of Puerto Rican ancestry.

Representative Ritchie Torres, also of Puerto Rican ancestry, said that he was "tempted to call Hinchcliffe racist garbage but doing so would be an insult to garbage." In response to the Puerto Rico joke, Trump campaign senior advisor Danielle Alvarez said that it did not reflect the views of Trump or the campaign, while Donald Trump Jr. retweeted Hinchcliffe's dismissal of criticism, in which Hinchcliffe denied he was racist and accused Walz and Ocasio-Cortez of having "no sense of humor."

Hinchcliffe singled out Walz for "[taking] the time out of his 'busy schedule' to analyze a joke out of context to make it seem racist". The Trump campaign distanced itself from Hinchcliffe's Puerto Rico comments.

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