Trump says his New York rally marked by vulgar and racial slurs was an ‘absolute love fest’

Adriana Gomez Licon and Michelle L. Price
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Palm Beach, Florida – Urged by some allies to apologize for racist comments made by speakers at his weekend rally, Donald Trump took the opposite approach on Tuesday, saying it was an “honor” to attend such an event and calling the event a “love festival” – the same term he used to describe the January 6 insurrection at the United States Capitol.

Trump gathered supporters and reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort two days after a massive rally at Madison Square Garden in which various speakers made a number of vulgar remarks, including an appearance by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe in which he joked that Puerto Rico was “floating island of garbage.” Some of Trump’s top Republican allies condemned the remarks, and his campaign took the rare step of publicly distancing itself from Hinchcliffe’s joke, though not from the rest of the comments.

But given the opportunity to apologize, both at Mar-a-Lago and in an earlier ABC interview, Trump instead bowed out. Speaking from his Florida resort, he said there had “never been an event as beautiful” as his Sunday rally in his hometown of New York.

“Love in this room. It was breathtaking,” he said. “It was like a love fest, an absolute love fest. It was an honor to take part in it.”

Just a week before Election Day, some Trump allies expressed concern that a rally that was intended to highlight the GOP presidential nominee’s closing message in grand New York style instead instead distracted from it and even burdened it, given the electoral importance of Puerto Ricans living in Pennsylvania and other key swing states.

On Tuesday, Trump was scheduled to hold a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a city with a large Latino population, where he would be joined by Puerto Rico’s shadow U.S. senator, Zoraida Buxo, according to a campaign official who spoke on the condition of anonymity ahead of the meeting’s formal announcement.

Buxo, who does not have a vote in the Senate because Puerto Rico is not a state, expressed her support for Trump in a post on the social media site X. She said Trump is a “strong leader” that Puerto Rico needs.

The fallout from the Madison Square Garden event threatened to highlight voters’ concerns about Trump’s rhetoric and propensity for controversy in the final stages as both campaigns battled for votes. Speakers at the rally also made racist remarks about Latinos, Blacks, Jews and Palestinians, as well as sexist slurs directed at Trump’s Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

On Tuesday, Trump tried to move past the controversy and turn back to Harris, denouncing her rival’s record on the border and inflation, saying that “on the issue after issue, she broke it” and “I’m going to fix it and fix it very quickly.”

Trump, who took no questions at the event, accused Harris of running a “campaign of absolute hate” and said she “keeps talking about Hitler and Nazis because she has a terrible past.”

In recent interviews with The New York Times and The Atlantic, Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff said the former president praised Adolf Hitler while in office and suggested the Nazi leader “did some good things.”

In an interview with ABC News on Tuesday, Trump tried to distance himself from Hinchcliffe but did not condemn his words.

“I don’t know him. Someone put it there. I don’t know who he is,” Trump said, according to the network, insisting he had not heard Hinchcliffe’s comments. When asked what he thought of them, Trump “did not take the opportunity to condemn them, reiterating that he had not heard the comments,” ABC reported.

The comments sparked outrage among Puerto Rican leaders.

The archbishop of Puerto Rico called on Trump to disavow them, saying it was not enough for the campaign to say the joke did not reflect Trump’s views. The president of the Puerto Rican Republican Party called Hinchcliffe’s “poor attempt at comedy” “disgraceful, ignorant and completely reprehensible.”

In Pennsylvania, where Trump was scheduled to campaign on Tuesday, the number of Latino voters eligible to vote has nearly tripled since 2000. More than half of them are eligible voters from Puerto Rico.

Angelo Ortega, a longtime Allentown resident and former Republican who plans to vote for Harris this time, said he couldn’t believe what he heard about the Trump rally.

“I don’t know if my jaw dropped or I was just so annoyed, so angry. I didn’t know what to feel,” said Ortega, who was born in New York but whose father was from Puerto Rico. Ortega is campaigning for Harris and said he knows at least one Latino GOP voter who plans to switch from Trump to Harris as a result of Hinchcliffe’s comments.

“They had it. They had it. They listened (Trump) but said they thought this was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Ortega, a member of the advocacy group Make the Road PA.

Still, some Republican Puerto Ricans weren’t surprised. Lydia Maldonado, who attended an event hosted by Trump in Florida on Tuesday, said in Spanish that it was important to note that it was not the former president who made the comments about Puerto Rico.

“He’s a comedian. He tries to be funny and says a lot of crap. The man is stupid. He has no idea about Puerto Rico and doesn’t know our culture. He screwed up. We have to forgive and let go,” said Maldonado, a Puerto Rican.

Harris’ campaign released an ad that will run online in battleground states, targeting Puerto Rican voters and highlighting the comedian’s remarks.

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Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in New York, Dánica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Nicholas Riccardi in Denver and Michael Rubinkam in Allentown, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.