Puerto Ricans vented their anger after a comedian targeted them with racist jokes at a weekend rally for former US president and the Republican Party’s presidential candidate Donald Trump and some warned he could pay for it on election day.
On the same day that US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Pary’s candidate, unveiled plans to revitalize the US territory, Tony Hinchcliffe called it an “island of garbage” at a major Trump rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
Puerto Ricans living in New York, such as 48-year-old Javier Diaz, said the insults would have “consequences for [former] president Trump.”
Photo: AFP
“I’m going to vote for Harris,” said Diaz, a paralegal living in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood.
Denis Castro, a 60-year-old retiree living in the same area, said the comments made by Hinchcliffe and others at the rally qualified as “racism.”
“You can’t be talking like that,” Castro said, suggesting that many people would be deterred from voting for Trump over the incident.
Residents of Puerto Rico cannot vote in US elections, but the diaspora population living in the 50 states numbers almost 6 million, according to Pew Research Center, and is eligible to vote. It is the largest Hispanic community in the country after Mexicans.
As Trump’s rally unfolded on Sunday, Harris was in key battleground state Pennsylvania, visiting a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia and outlining plans to foster economic growth and create jobs on the island.
“Puerto Ricans deserve a president who sees and invests in [their] strength,” Harris said in a clip published on social media alongside a video of Hinchcliffe.
The US vice president also earned key endorsements from Puerto Rican celebrities, including rapper Bad Bunny, singer Ricky Martin and actress-singer Jennifer Lopez.
Bad Bunny, who has 45 million Instagram followers, reposted a video of Harris attacking Trump’s response to hurricanes that devastated the island while the Republican was president.
“He abandoned the island, tried to block aid after back-to-back devastating hurricanes and offered nothing more than paper towels and insults,” Harris says in the clip.
Harris also launched a new ad targeting Puerto Rican voters, promising “a new way forward.”
Sharing a clip from Trump’s rally, Martin wrote: “This is what they think about us. Vote for Kamala Harris.”
Trump and Harris are in a dead heat in the seven swing states expected to decide the election, so infuriating Latino voters with a week to go before election day could prove damaging for the former president seeking a return to the Oval Office.
Though Trump’s campaign sought to distance itself from Hinchcliffe’s remarks, the Republican billionaire has repeatedly and aggressively attacked migrants, particularly from Latin America, on the campaign trail.
“They invited this rhetoric on their stage for a reason,” Democratic lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is of Puerto Rican descent, said in a message.
Trump surrogates have sought to distance their party and its candidate from the joke.
However, Hinchcliffe, who goes by Kill Tony, fired back against his critics, including Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz.
“These people have no sense of humor. Wild that a vice presidential candidate would take time out of his ‘busy schedule’ to analyze a joke taken out of context to make it seem racist,” Hinchcliffe wrote.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is constructing a new counter-stealth radar system on a disputed reef in the South China Sea that would significantly expand its surveillance capabilities in the region, satellite imagery suggests. Analysis by London-based think tank Chatham House suggests China is upgrading its outpost on Triton Island (Jhongjian Island, 中建島) on the southwest corner of the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), building what might be a launching point for an anti-ship missile battery and sophisticated radar system. “By constraining the US ability to operate stealth aircraft, and threaten stealth aircraft, these capabilities in the South China Sea send
HAVANA: Repeated blackouts have left residents of the Cuban capital concerned about food, water supply and the nation’s future, but so far, there have been few protests Maria Elena Cardenas, 76, lives in a municipal shelter on Amargura Street in Havana’s colonial old town. The building has an elegant past, but for the last few days Maria has been cooking with sticks she had found on the street. “You know, we Cubans manage the best we can,” she said. She lives in the shelter because her home collapsed, a regular occurrence in the poorest, oldest parts of the beautiful city. Cuba’s government has spent the last days attempting to get the island’s national grid functioning after repeated island-wide blackouts. Without power, sleep becomes difficult in the heat, food
U-TURN? Trami was moving northwest toward Vietnam yesterday, but high-pressure winds and other factors could force it to turn back toward the Philippines Tropical Storm Trami blew away from the northwestern Philippines yesterday, leaving at least 65 people dead in landslides and extensive flooding that forced authorities to scramble for more rescue boats to save thousands of terrified people, who were trapped, some on their roofs. However, the onslaught might not be over: State forecasters raised the rare possibility that the storm — the 11th and one of the deadliest to hit the Philippines this year — could make a U-turn next week as it is pushed back by high-pressure winds in the South China Sea. A Philippine provincial police chief yesterday said that 33
PROPAGANDA: The leaflets attacked the South Korean president and first lady with phrases such as: ‘It’s fortunate that President Yoon and his wife have no children’ North Korean propaganda leaflets apparently carried by balloons were found scattered on the streets of the South Korean capital, Seoul, yesterday, including some making personal attacks on the country’s president and first lady. The leaflets attacking South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and first lady Kim Keon-hee found in the capital appear to be the first instance of the North Korean government directly sending anti-South propaganda material across the border. They included graphic messages accusing the Yoon government of failures that had left his people living in despair, and describing the first couple as immoral and mentally unstable. The leaflets included photographs of the
RSS