By james art At former President Donald Trump’s rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday night, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe spoke, making various comments about certain ethnic groups and leading to outrage from those targeted groups.
The rally was meant to be an opportunity for Trump to make his closing arguments just a week before Election Day, but the former president’s opening actions left his campaign on the defensive, according to POLITICO.
The rally opened with Hinchcliffe, best known as host of the live comedy podcast ‘Kill Tony’. Hinchcliffe’s streak included slurs and racist comments directed at Hispanics, African-Americans and other groups, according to POLITICO.
“Right now there’s literally a floating island of trash in the middle of the ocean,” Hinchcliffe said. “I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”
Puerto Rican student and member of the University of Wisconsin Caribbean Student Association, Evan Epps, spoke about his reaction to these comments. He felt disgusted when he heard them, and being a comedian doesn’t give you the right to humiliate an entire community, he said.
“Given what Puerto Rico has been through, the hurricanes and all the weather changes, to make a comment that it’s trash just seems very disingenuous and like they don’t care about what the island has been through,” Epps said .
There are over 61,000 Puerto Ricans living in Wisconsin and about 5.8 million in the U.S., according to Newsweek.
Epps isn’t the only one frustrated by the comments, with a number of prominent Republican figures condemning Hinchcliffe’s words via social media platforms.
Republican Party representative Maria Elvira Salazar wrote X she was “disgusted” by Hinchcliffe’s “racist” comment about Puerto Rico and his words did not reflect the values of the Republican Party. Senator Rick Scott wrote X the joke was unfunny and untrue and added that Puerto Rico is a “beautiful place.” Representative Anthony D’Esposito also took Xsaying he’s proud to be Puerto Rican and “the only thing that’s ‘trash’ is a bad comedy set.”
Hinchcliffe also made a comment about Hispanics related to immigration.
“They also like to make babies,” Hinchcliffe said. “Just know this. They do it. They do it. There is no withdrawal. They don’t. They go inside. Just like they did to our country.”
Epps argues that jokes like these are completely inappropriate in a political setting and push a rhetoric of exclusivity in the country.
When you’re a political candidate running for president and you claim to care about all Americans, refusing to recognize Puerto Ricans as American citizens is controversial, Epps said.
But Epps said he wasn’t surprised by the comments, given the strategies Trump has used so far to blame Latino immigrants for the country’s problems.
“It sounds like something that would be said at a Trump rally,” Epps said. “But of course you will always be disappointed that it has been said. You don’t think you’ll be watching TV and hear something so disgraceful about your own country or your own people.
Making jokes about someone’s racial or ethnic group is not a successful strategy when it comes to campaigning for a political position because it only serves to make you look ignorant and disingenuous, Epps said.
Normalizing comments like these causes an increased amount of scapegoating and misconceptions, Epps said. With the state of political polarization we are in, people are more inclined to believe these misconceptions as fact.
UW’s CSA is a resource for students affected by these comments, Epps said. He spoke about the value of CSA and its cross-sectoral approach.
“The biggest thing that I liked about CSA is that they are an organization that focuses specifically on Caribbean students, and so it’s more of a narrow approach to what it means to be Caribbean and also Latino, it broadens the way , how we approach ethnic identities,” Epps said.