(PALM BEACH, Fla.) — On Tuesday, Donald Trump referred to his rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden, an event featuring numerous speakers, as a “lovefest.”
This is the same term the former president has previously used to describe the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Speaking to reporters and supporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump asserted that “there’s never been an event so beautiful” as his Sunday night rally in his hometown of New York City.
“The love in that room. It was breathtaking,” he stated. “It was like a lovefest, an absolute lovefest. And it was my honor to be involved.”
This comes despite criticism from Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign and many observers, including Republicans, concerning racist remarks made by speakers during the pre-show targeting Latinos, Black people, Jews, and Palestinians, alongside sexist insults directed at Harris and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s set, in which he joked that was a “floating island of garbage,” sparked particular outrage given the electoral significance of Puerto Ricans living in Pennsylvania and other key swing states. The Trump campaign took the unusual step of distancing itself from Hinchcliffe’s joke about Puerto Rico but not other comments.
The president of Puerto Rico’s Republican Party, Ángel Cintrón, labeled Hinchcliffe’s “poor attempt at comedy” as “disgraceful, ignorant and totally reprehensible.”
“There is no room for absurd and racist comments like that. They do not represent the conservative values of republicanism anywhere in our nation,” Cintrón declared in a statement.
Trump used the event at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday to criticize Harris’ record on the border and the economy, stating that, “On issue after issue, she broke it” and “I’m going to fix it and fix it very fast.”
With just a week before Election Day, some Trump allies have expressed concern that the event, intended to highlight his closing message, has instead served as a distraction, amplifying voters’ concerns about his rhetoric and penchant for controversy in the race’s final stretch.
Speaking to ABC News prior to the event, Trump claimed he didn’t know the comedian who delivered the most egregious insults but did not denounce the comments either.
“I don’t know him, someone put him up there. I don’t know who he is,” he said, according to the network, insisting that he hadn’t heard Hinchcliffe’s comments. However, when asked for his opinion on the comments, Trump “did not take the opportunity to denounce them, repeating that he didn’t hear the comments,” ABC reported.
Trump is scheduled to campaign later Tuesday in Pennsylvania, a state where the Latino eligible voter population has more than doubled since 2000, from 206,000 to 620,000 in 2023, according to Census Bureau figures. More than half of those are Puerto Rican eligible voters.
He will also hold a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, which has a significant Hispanic population, on Tuesday night.
Angelo Ortega, a longtime Allentown resident and former Republican who plans to vote for Harris this time around, said he couldn’t believe what he’d heard about Trump’s rally.
“I don’t know if my jaw dropped or I was just so irritated, angry. I didn’t know what to feel,” said Ortega, who was born in New York but whose father came from Puerto Rico. Ortega has been campaigning for Harris and stated he knows of at least one Hispanic GOP voter planning to switch from Trump to Harris as a result of Hinchcliffe’s comments.
“They’ve had it. They’ve had it. They were listening to (Trump), but they said they think that that was like the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Ortega, a member of the Make the Road PA advocacy group.
Trump “didn’t make the comment about Puerto Rico. The comedian made the comment about Puerto Rico. But it is his political forum.”
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Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in New York, Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Michael Rubinkam in Allentown, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.