The Memo: Trump campaign struggles to contain Puerto Rico October surprise

The Trump campaign is struggling to contain an October surprise of its own making, just one week from Election Day.

A racist remark by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, one of many warm-up speakers for former President Trump at a Sunday rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden, is reverberating hard.

Vice President Harris and other Democrats are working to make sure the gibe reaches the ears of as many Latino voters as possible — especially in the swing states that will decide the election.

Republicans, including Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (Ohio), are trying to minimize the damage — either by distancing themselves from what Hinchcliffe said or by suggesting that a remark made in jest should not spark such outrage.

At the rally, Hinchcliffe referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” He also used other racist tropes including a reference to Black people and watermelons, and a crude reference linking procreation and immigration.

The comments were slammed as offensive in their own right. But they could also have serious electoral repercussions.

More than 400,000 people born in Puerto Rico or of Puerto Rican descent live in Pennsylvania, the largest of the seven battleground states. The state is essentially deadlocked, with Trump leading Harris by just four-tenths of a percentage point in the polling average maintained by The Hill/Decision Desk HQ.

There are also tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans in other swing states, including Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina.

Democratic operative Chuck Rocha, an expert on the Latino vote, told this column that he and a super PAC he advises, Nuestro PAC, had sent clips of Hinchcliffe’s remarks “to every Puerto Rican voter in Pennsylvania” on Monday.

Referring to the uproar and its effect on Trump’s campaign, Rocha added, “It’s an unforced error from a campaign that has no strategic vision. Puerto Rican voters are very sensitive about their island and how you talk about their island — whether they themselves live on that island or in Allentown.”

Allentown, about 50 miles north of Philadelphia, is described by The Philadelphia Inquirer as “a majority Latino city and home to 34,000 Puerto Ricans — the eighth-largest Puerto Rican community in America.”

Harris has been turning the screws on Trump over the remark.

The vice president on Monday cited Trump’s New York event as having “highlighted a point that I’ve been making throughout this campaign. … He is focused and actually fixated on his grievances, on himself and on dividing our country.”

Her campaign also launched a digital ad aimed at Latino voters that began with Hinchcliffe’s words and asserted that “Puerto Ricans deserve better.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who is of Puerto Rican descent, described the Madison Square Garden rally as a “hate rally” during an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday morning.

On social media, Ocasio-Cortez hit back at Hinchcliffe’s defense that “these people have no sense of humor” and that his joke had been “taken out of context to make it seem racist.”

The New York congresswoman accused the comic of “feeding red-meat racism alongside a throng of other bigots to a frothing crowd.”

The reaction from the Trump campaign — and from the GOP more broadly — suggests they are well aware of the potential damage from the furor.

Trump campaign senior adviser Danielle Alvarez told media outlets that the comic’s comments did not “reflect the views” of the former president or his campaign.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), whose state is home to more than 1 million people of Puerto Rican descent, responded almost instantly to the controversy on Sunday evening, with a post on the social platform X saying that the joke was “not funny and it’s not true.”

Scott added that Puerto Ricans are “amazing people and amazing Americans.”

Also on social media, Rep. Anthony D'Esposito (R-N.Y.) noted that he was “proud to be Puerto Rican,” adding that “the only thing that’s ‘garbage’ was a bad comedy set.”

Meanwhile, Vance said at a rally on Monday that he had "heard about" though not "seen" Hinchcliffe's joke, but that he was "so over" people taking offense easily.

To be sure, it’s possible that the furor does not dent Trump’s chances.

He has not yet weighed in on the matter directly, but he could disavow the comments or simply hope that the controversy fades, as so many revolving around him have done in the past.

The Trump campaign continues to believe it can do better with Latino voters, especially young men, than GOP nominees have done in the recent past. Pro-Trump voices contend that there are economic and cultural reasons why Latinos are drawn to his platform.

But Democrats counter that the Puerto Rico controversy is especially potent for several reasons: the swing states’ demographics, the capacity of other non-Puerto Rican Latinos to take offense at the remarks, and of course the proximity to Election Day.

According to José Parra, a Democratic strategist and a former senior adviser to the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.): “If Pennsylvania swings toward the Democrats, I think you can look back on this as a pivotal moment.”

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.