At former President Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City Sunday night, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe spoke, making various comments towards certain ethnic groups and resulting in outrage from those targeted groups.
The rally was intended to be an opportunity for Trump to make his closing arguments only a week before election day, but the former president’s opening acts left his campaign on the defensive, according to POLITICO.
The rally opened with Hinchcliffe, best known for being the host of the live comedy podcast “Kill Tony.” Hinchcliffe’s set involved slurs and racist comments targeted towards Latinos, African Americans and other groups, according to POLITICO.
“There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now,” Hinchcliffe said. “I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”
Puerto Rican student and member of the University of Wisconsin Caribbean Students Association Evan Epps spoke on his reaction to these comments. He felt disgusted when he heard them, and being a comedian doesn’t give you the right to degrade an entire community, he said.
“Considering how much Puerto Rico has gone through, the hurricanes and all the weather changes, to make a comment about it being a piece of garbage just seemed very insincere and like they don’t really care about what the island has gone through,” Epps said.
There are over 61,000 Puerto Ricans living in Wisconsin and around 5.8 million throughout the U.S., according to Newsweek.
Epps is not the only one frustrated by these comments, with multiple prominent Republican figures denouncing Hinchcliffe’s words via social media platforms.
GOP Rep. María Elvira Salazar wrote on X she was “disgusted” by Hinchcliffe’s “racist” comment about Puerto Rico, and his words do not reflect GOP values. Sen. Rick Scott wrote on X the joke was unfunny and untrue, and added Puerto Rico is a “beautiful place.” Rep. Anthony D’Esposito also took to X, saying he is proud to be Puerto Rican, and “the only thing that’s ‘garbage’ was a bad comedy set.”
Hinchcliffe also made a comment about Latinos relating to immigration.
“They love making babies too,” Hinchcliffe said. “Just know that. They do. They do. There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside. Just like they did to our country.”
Epps claimed jokes like these are entirely inappropriate in political settings and push rhetoric of exclusivity in the country.
When you’re a political candidate running for president and claiming you care about all American people, refusing to acknowledge Puerto Ricans as American citizens is contradictory, Epps said.
But, Epps said he was not surprised these comments were made given the strategies Trump has been employing thus far in blaming the country’s issues on Latino immigrants.
“It seems like something that would be said at a Trump rally,” Epps said. “But of course, you’re always going to be disappointed that it’s said. You don’t think that you’ll be watching television and hear something so disgraceful about your own country or your own people.”
Making jokes about someone’s racial or ethnic group isn’t a successful strategy in terms of campaigning for a political position, because it only serves to make you look ignorant and disingenuous, Epps said.
The normalization of comments such as these causes an increased amount of scapegoating and misconceptions, Epps said. With the state of political polarization we are in, people are more likely to believe these misconceptions as fact.
UW’s CSA is a resource for students affected by these comments, Epps said. He spoke to the value of CSA and its intersectional approach.
“The biggest thing that I’ve loved about CSA is they are an organization that specifically focuses on Caribbean students and so it’s more of a narrowed approach to what it means to be Caribbean and also Latino, it broadens how we approach ethnic identities,” Epps said.
