Trump New York rally: Speakers’ racist jokes risk alienating key voters
It’s the legendary venue he’s always wanted to play: Donald Trump’s first night at Madison Square Garden was meant to be his last big pitch to undecided voters. But much of the focus since has been on the support acts: speakers who told racist jokes about Latino and Black voters and now risk alienating the very voters he needs to win over.
It was supposed to be a triumphant homecoming. The self-styled “world’s most famous arena” hosting one of the city’s most famous sons. The exterior walls were emblazoned with images of the star of the show and the hopeful message “Dream Big”.
“The King of New York is back to reclaim the city that he built,” proclaimed son and warm-up act Donald Trump Junior.
Back in the Big Apple, he brought his MAGA circus to the place where Barnum and Bailey started out: giving voice to middle America in (not quite) midtown Manhattan. The red hats and Trump t-shirts flowed towards MSG in all directions, bringing young and old together for tea-time family fun.
Of course Donald Trump didn’t build New York City and since leaving office he’s moved to Florida. His visits to Manhattan in the last year have often been consumed with legal fights – a criminal trial and civil hearings.
And within minutes, as so often at Trump rallies in recent months, the message of unity and family turned to something darker and more profane.
There was the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who said: “I don’t know if you know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”
Puerto Rico is in fact an American territory, which makes Puerto Ricans a critical American voting block and one Mr Trump needs to win over if he is to take back the White House. But he wasn’t done. An X-rated “gag” about Latino voters and their sex lives was served up along with offensive remarks about Black voters.
Two more key voting constituencies potentially alienated – to the horror of Republican candidates in close races, like Florida Senate candidate and Trump ally Rick Scott. And the campaign subsequently announced that Mr Hinchcliffe’s joke about the Puerto Ricans “does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign”.
The Democrats and Kamala Harris were described in apocalyptic terms: “the whole f****** party… a bunch of degenerates”, said the radio host Sid Rosenberg. A childhood friend of Trump described Harris as “the devil… the antichrist.” The CEO of 10X said that Harris and “her pimp handlers will destroy” America. Victory against the Democrats would not be enough, said Grant Cardone, “we need to destroy this [sic] people”.
The aim was to paint the rally as the pinnacle of Trump’s comeback. But critics drew a very different parallel, with a Nazi rally that was held in this very venue in 1939.
Trump described the election in eight days time as “Liberation Day” from what he called an occupation by invading migrants.
As thousands of the Trump faithful listened in New York, Kamala Harris, with eerie timing, was making a push to win over the very voting block Mr Trump’s sideshow wanted to mock. On her twentieth trip of the year to the key swing state of Pennsylvania, the vice president visited a Puerto Rican restaurant and unveiled a new taskforce to improve the economic prosperity of the island.
“Truly the path to victory runs through Philly and it through Pennsylvania. It runs through all of you,” she told diners in Philadelphia. On that, both candidates can agree. The question is whether the show at Madison Square Garden drew more of those critical voters into the Trump fold, or pushed them away?