Donald Trump and his campaign are continuing to distance themselves from Tony Hinchcliffe’s controversial standup at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, where his racially offensive routine targeting Puerto Ricans and people of color left Trump’s team scrambling to contain the backlash with just a week until the election.
Campaign representatives claim they did not screen comedian Hinchcliffe’s set before he took the stage, while Trump told ABC News he does not know the comedian nor heard any of Hinchcliffe’s remarks.
“I don’t know him, someone put him up there. I don’t know who he is,” Trump told ABC.
The Austin-based comic, whose podcast “Kill Tony” touts 1.8 million Youtube subscribers, set a bigoted tone for the rally as he opened the night with a scurrilous monologue, saying, “There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now, I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”
As outrage exploded across the country, the Trump campaign swiftly tried to distance itself from Hinchcliffe’s remarks, aware that millions of Puerto Rican voters would be casting ballots on Nov. 5.
Danielle Alvarez, one of Trump’s senior campaign advisers, immediately issued a statement after the rally, saying Hinchcliffe’s joke about Puerto Rico “does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”
However, Alvarez did not address the other racist jokes by Hinchcliffe, including his reference to carving watermelons with a Black friend and his ridiculous suggestion that all Hispanics should leave the country because they don’t use birth control and keep having children.
Senator JD Vance said he was “over it” when asked his remarks about the joke Monday night. Telling NBC News, “I’ve heard about the joke, I haven’t actually seen the joke that you mentioned, but I think that it’s telling that Kamala Harris’ closing message is essentially that all of Donald Trump’s voters are Nazis, and you should get really pissed off about a comedian telling a joke.”
Trump also stopped short of denouncing Hinchcliffe’s views, according to NBC.
Democrats have criticized Trump for not addressing the matter directly and for not condemning the racist comments when he took the stage later in the evening, which many had viewed as tacit approval by the former president.
Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent, condemned the Madison Square Garden rally, saying it highlighted the points her campaign has been making about Trump’s divisive politics from the start, which she argues is damaging to the country’s morale.
“I think last night, Donald Trump’s event in Madison Square Garden really highlighted a point that I’ve been making throughout this campaign,” Harris told reporters before flying to Michigan on Monday. “He is focused and actually fixated on his grievances, on himself and on dividing our country.”
Hinchcliffe’s racist punchlines drew lukewarm laughter at the rally but sparked an uproar all across the country.
In an attempt to pour water on the controversy, a Trump campaign official explained that, “The entire speech was not vetted,” according to Mediaite.
However, Hinchcliffe is someone whose career was built on telling racist jokes, while those familiar with his past material said they were not surprised at all by his routine at the rally.
The Trump campaign has yet to produce any documented version of Hinchcliffe’s pre-approved material, fueling speculation that campaign staff might have been aware of the content, particularly if he had been reading from a teleprompter, but this could not be confirmed.
Still, the possibility has led some critics to suggest that key figures in the Trump campaign may have known about or even authorized the offensive material, but campaign officials remain adamant this was not the case.
The Trump campaign has not offered any clarification on how it overlooked Hinchcliffe’s well-known history of controversial humor.
In recent days, resourceful social media users have easily found and resurfaced dozens of racially insensitive one-liners on X that date more than a decade.
“Anyone wanna go halfsies on a slave,” Hinchcliffe wrote in May 2011. More than a year later, Hinchcliffe gratuitously invoked Hitler while poking fun at himself over a comedy routine he gave in December 2012.
“I’m killing up here, am I white people?” he said before signing off as “ -Adolf Hitler doing stand-up.”
On the eleventh anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, Hinchcliffe posted, “9-11 was the first time black employees were rewarded for being late to work.”
CNN host Dana Bash addressed this aspect of the controversy on Monday’s episode of Inside Politics, expressing skepticism regarding claims by the Trump campaign that it did not vet Hinchcliffe’s remarks beforehand.
“He made plenty of other horrifying remarks about Latinos, but they’re frankly too X-rated to play here,” Bash said before handing off to Kristen Holmes. She reported that the Trump campaign’s statement included “no apology” but said it was “very telling” that officials acknowledged “some political trouble” due to the “almost immediate” backlash from both Democrats and Republicans.
“One thing to keep in mind here, Dana,” said Holmes, “as somebody who goes to almost all of these rallies, nothing Donald Trump himself said last night was any different from what we have heard time and time again and reported on. This rhetoric around immigration, around crime, it’s kind of fear-stoking language that is all things that he has said before.”
Holmes mentioned that she had talked to several Trump advisers, who noted that “the remarks were supposed to be vetted,” but one source specifically stated that Hinchcliffe’s “entire speech was not vetted.”
However, Bash challenged the Trump campaign’s narrative, stating, “I’m going to just flatly call BS on the disconnect” between the comments made on stage and the campaign’s claims, emphasizing that Hinchcliffe’s remarks were “part of a theme that we heard last night.”
Some social media users agreed with this take.
One such person on X drew the line on the Trump campaign, stating, “Cut it out. Just f—ing quit it. We are not going to scapegoat the comic. Yes, he was vile and racist, but the whole rally was vile and racist. Every speaker was gross and ghoulish. Trump’s campaign is saying they didn’t vet this guy. Yeah they did, that’s how he got the gig.”
Joining Hinchcliffe at the Oct. 27 rally was a parade of Republican speakers, who took the stage one after another with inflammatory rhetoric, racial slurs, and troubling threats aimed at immigrants, as well as vicious comments disparaging Harris, echoing Trump’s previous attacks on the Democratic nominee.
Much of the vitriolic discourse stemmed not from Trump himself but from his celebrity backers and other everyday Republicans, who spoke off the cuff for more than two hours until Trump arrived.
The xenophobic commentary sparked a nationwide uproar and even prompted Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny to publicly endorse Harris alongside several influential Puerto Rican superstars, including Jennifer Lopez, Luis Fonsi and Ricky Martin.
Democrats viewed these endorsements as a clear signal that Hinchcliffe’s comments will not be overlooked when Latino voters head to the polls next week.
CNN’s Manu Raju also criticized Hinchcliffe’s remarks as “vile” and “racist,” emphasizing that his comments were not isolated incidents.
He described the Trump campaign’s effort to distance itself as “pretty weak sauce,” pointing out that they failed to address the numerous other “flat-out racist” statements made during the rally.
Bash added that the statement from the Trump campaign was from “a spokesperson nobody’s actually heard of” and not “the actual candidate.”
“If the campaign wants nothing to do with it, they have to be stronger in pushing back,” replied Raju, “but the response has been pretty weak so far.”
The rally had been intended to deliver the closing message of Trump’s campaign just nine days before the vote but quickly morphed into a chaotic showcase of grievances, misogyny, and racism.
Yet, on Monday, Trump’s spokesperson issued a statement demanding an apology from Kamala Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who compared Trump’s rally to the infamous 1939 Nazi rally held at Madison Square Garden by the German American Bund, which also drew 20,000 attendees claiming to be “pro-American.”
“Go do your Google on this. Donald Trump has this big rally going on in Madison Square Garden,” Walz told Democratic supporters in Nevada the same day as Trump’s rally. “There’s a direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the 1930s in Madison Square Garden. And don’t think for one second he doesn’t know exactly what they’re doing there.”
The response from Trump’s camp was swift.
“Kamala Harris’ campaign is copying Hillary Clinton’s strategy of attacking half the country,” Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “Tim Walz needs to apologize for his disgraceful comments smearing Trump supporters. This kind of rhetoric has already inspired assassination attempts.”
