GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance tried to stop the bleeding from the Republican presidential ticket, after a comedian made a racist joke about Puerto Rico and Latinos at a Trump campaign rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday.
Vance said Monday night that people need to get "over it" and "stop getting so offended" at the joke, in which Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage" and made a vulgar comment about Latinos and ejaculating without protection.
“A comedian told a joke, and I don’t think that’s news worth making,” Vance told a reporter at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, according to NBC News.
Vance added, “Maybe I’m old fashioned, or maybe I just grew up with a grandmother who had an especially foul mouth. But you know what I do? You know what I do when I think a joke is dumb or not funny? I don’t laugh.”
But voters don’t seem to be buying Vance’s argument, as the outrage over the so-called “joke” is not going away. The media, usually averse to calling things racist, has been unafraid to label Trump’s MSG rally as such.
Puerto Rican superstars Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Martin, and Luis Fonsi all came out to condemn the joke and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign.
Puerto Rico's GOP chairman is demanding former President Donald Trump apologize for the remark or he won't vote for him.
The Archbishop of San Juan, Puerto Rico also demanded that Trump apologize, writing in a news release that, “It is not sufficient for your campaign to apologize. It is important that you, personally, apologize for these comments.”
“These kinds of remarks should not be a part of the political discourse of a civilized society,” Archbishop Roberto O. Gonzales Nieves wrote.
Trump’s campaign issued a milquetoast apology.
But getting Trump to apologize is another story. The 78-year-old never apologizes, believing that he could never be wrong and that those who are offended by him are the problem. In fact, Trump usually doubles down when he’s caught in controversy.
Trump has yet to apologize for this latest mess, but instead felt the need to insist to a mostly empty arena in Georgia where he was holding a rally that he is “not a Nazi,” after many people compared his MSG rally with the Nazi rally held at the famed arena in 1939.
Trump's Republican allies fear the Puerto Rico comments could do Trump's campaign in, as key battleground states like Pennsylvania have a large Puerto Rican population that could swing a close election to Harris.
“Apparently the October surprise was a presidential campaign committing mass political suicide on stage at MSG,” Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist and former Trump administration appointee, told Politico.
While residents of the island of Puerto Rico do not have a say in the outcome of the presidential race, the large Puerto Rican diaspora does.
And about 8% of the Puerto Rican population in the United States lives in Pennsylvania, according to data from the Pew Research Center, making them a key voting bloc in the battleground state that could determine the outcome of the election.
Politico reported that Puerto Ricans plan to protest at a Trump rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday.
And Puerto Rican Democratic activists are getting the word out about the comment to try to motivate voters to get out and vote for Harris.
“Puerto Ricans have a unique affinity for their homeland,” Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha, who blasted out the racist Puerto Rico comments in 250,000 texts, told The New York Times. “When you attack the island, it cuts so deep with the community.”
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