RESOLVED: The Trump Hate Rally was an Unforced Error

Also: Over 1.1 million Puerto Ricans live in Florida alone

Former President Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden closing argument drew sharp comparisons to the infamous 1939 American Nazi rally. Boborygmous was the dark energy, the red hot white male grievance and — of course — the sulfurous bigotry. Trump’s anti-woke culture actually worked against him, as many of the speakers came off as racist, sexist idiots in the media capital of the world as Sunday afternoon darkened into evening, a time generally reserved for Church, Family and Football. This is not a good look for the last week before the general election.

Perhaps a little wokeness is not such a bad thing after all. Perhaps a modest amount of wokeness might have resulted in some editing of the Teleprompter so as not to descend into the moist gutter of the lizard brain? Maybe a soupçon of DEI as well in the scheduling of speakers might have avoided the embarrassment of Oozy Giuliani and perennial AM talk radio dirtbag Sid Rosenberg? “The joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign,” is how Trump/Vance responded to the backlash against alleged comedian Tony Hinchcliffe. But Hinchcliffe calling Puerto Rico an island of garbage and poking laughter and its men for not practicing safe sex in the crudest manner imaginable, as well as of Giuliani telling the audience assembled that Palestinian toddlers are trained to kill Americans, were all vetted and pre-loaded into the Teleprompter.

A little of the “woke mind virus” might have smoothed out their fascist, hyper-testosteronal edges, especially considering that 5.8 million Puerto Ricans live in the US. A smidgeon too much bro, concluded the formerly relevant Megyn Kelly. Also, Giuliani’s filthy little attempt at populism has energized Progressive activists like Wajahat Ali and a Senator like Bernie Sanders to make the argument that Harris/Walz is better than Trump on Gaza, despite its seeming inability to distance itself from the Netanyahu government. I would call that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, a classic unforced error on the part of the Trump campaign. Even oozy Rudy’s daughter is voting Harris/Walz.

Cranky Centrist James Carville, no stranger to Presidential politics, is now certain Harris/Walz will win. This is an astonishing development, considering he has been a catastrophic thinker about the Democrat prospects in this election for literally years. We will not entertain the possibility that this is because he consumes far too much right-wing content. Still, Carville thinks the rally was one unforced error too many for TrumpWorld, despite how many irregular voters such a hate rally may activate. “He lost in 2018, he lost in 20202, he lost in 20222,” Carville told Ari Melber last night on MSNBC. “The Democrats have won every election that’s been held in the last two years. Trump is a giant loser.” He went further, deep into the tall grass of the rally:

The stuff last night was so over the top it’s unbelievable. Let me just -- one little factoid here. Do you know how many Puerto Rican voters there are in Pennsylvania? 273,000. This is going to cost him votes … this is a community that is not going to take well to this ..

Harris naturally condemned Trump for offering naught else but paper towels and insults in 2017 to the US territory. Will Hispanic voters take notice? Thirteen states had one million or more Hispanic residents in 2023 — AZ, CA, CO, FL, GA, Il, NJ, NM, NY, NC, PA, TX and WA. Further, Over 1.1 million Puerto Ricans live in Florida alone. And of those thirteen states, four are of the seven swing states that will decide this election. Again, Will Hispanic residents join Puerto Rican voters next week in repudiating Trump/Vance? Our crystal ball is opaque at the present. But if Harris/Walz does not hammer in this point with their campaign cash advantage as much as is possible in the next seven days then it is guilty of political malpractice of the highest magnitude. If Harris/Walz can’t win Pennsylvania with this gifted unforced error as well as the high concentration of Ukranian voters in the state …

Musician Bad Bunny posted support of the Vice President after the disgusting joke backfired. So did JLo and Ricky Martin. “This is what they think of us,” Martin wrote on Insta. None of these artists are particularly political; in fact, political activism does not serve the financial interests of mega-stars. It alienates potential fans. I’m fairly sure even Taylor Swift would rather have stayed above the fray, like Dolly Parton has for so many years, but for Trump’s sickening debate performance — another unforced error. And the Puerto Rican insult at his rally this weekend has re-opened the wounds of how Trump as President treated the United States territory, forcing the hand of the Latino celebrities. But it goes back further than Hurricane Maria, which slammed into the island as a powerful Category 4 storm in 2017 …

Trump — and lets be frank here — has no problem with white immigrants from majority white countries. Especially if they are from Scandinavia and hot; but Trump also has a thing for Eastern European women (wives #1 and #3), as Putin may or may not have taken advantage. And at a Florida fundraiser for millionaires, the nationalist former President bemoaned a lack of immigrants to the US from “nice” countries “like Denmark [or] Switzerland”, according to Martin Pengelly of The Guardian. Also his wife, Melania, still has sports a Croatian accent as thick as Pag Cheese. By contrast, who can forget in 2018, when he referred to immigrants from Haiti and some African nations as “people from shithole countries”?

Then there was this campaign’s invocation — during a Presidential debate — of pet-eating against Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. Who can forget the incredulous laughter of the Vice President at such a stupid and racist (and, oddly, super focus-tested) accusation. “Woke” people knew precisely what Trump and Vance were aiming to do with that remark. It was conjured by TrumpWorld to demonize a very fragile immigrant community — from the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Aside from a small population in South Florida — within a solidly red state — what could Haitians do in retaliation? It is, we cannot fail to note, organic to fascist regimes to target minorities to vilify and exclude, the most infamous example being the Jews in Nazi Germany. Why should Trump, who instituted the Muslim ban in his first Presidential iteration, be any different? This is the same Trump that valorizes Victor Orban of Hungary, an anti-LGBT fanatic.

Earlier this month, Trump attended a Univision Town Hall with undecided voters. He was asked about the Haitian migrants because Haiti is actually a Caribbean nation in Latin America. This does not seem to be a fact that he picked up at the Wharton School. Trump’s answer drew disbelieving looks from the audience of Latinos, particularly from the questioner (see above), who knew a thing or two about racist dog-whistles and, ancillary to that, solidarity with Latin-American immigrants when confronting a pink fascist. According to CNN:

Trump has previously said that the Haitian migrants, despite their protected status under federal law, are “illegal immigrants as far as I’m concerned,” saying he would revoke their status and deport them if he wins another term in November.

The initial question to the former president on Wednesday noted that remark, which like so many others came despite multiple attempts by authorities in Springfield to publicly quash the false claims. Trump did not respond directly, but – after acknowledging he’s never been to the city – said he is planning a visit.

“I’m going to be there and we’re going to take a look,” Trump said, “and I’ll give you a full report when I do.”

Swell and lovely! So — we have African s-hole countries, a paper towel photo-op for Puerto Rico, Latin-Americans eating Midwestern pets, leading to the apex of this white-supremacist comedy pyramid involving a US territory referred to as an island of garbage. It’s not that we can’t take a joke, it’s that the Republican party is simply not funny, particularly when it comes to punching down against minorities. Is that how they define masculinity? The only problem with that definition is that the more you punch down against minorities, the more they coalesce into a strong coalition against such abuse. Here’s to hoping this happens next week …

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”Until fairly recently, it was standard practice for presidential candidates to spend the final weeks of a campaign trying to woo centrist voters in swing states while downplaying the most extreme supporters in their base, whom they knew would show up anyway. Trump has flipped that strategy on its head. Based on his experiences from 2016 and 2020, he knows that a lot of mainstream Republicans and Republican leaners will complain quite a bit about his rhetoric and behavior, and maybe threaten to vote for someone else, but when it comes down to a choice between him and a Democrat, they’ll still show up for him. And anyone who really has a problem with him probably left the Republican Party years ago. Instead, he treats the moderate Republicans as his reliable base, and wants to make sure that the extremists are exercised enough to show up on Election Day. The racist comments at Madison Square Garden are designed to do exactly that. Considering that one of the major themes of the Republican National Convention was the deportation of immigrants and the articulation of a ‘blood and soil’ vision of America, and that the campaign’s core message the month after that was promoting false stories that Haitian immigrants were devouring Americans’ pets, and the ongoing false campaign claim that immigrants are responsible for the bulk of crime in the United States, it’s clear that this is not an accidental slip. Trump isn’t trying to run a conventional campaign and accidentally letting some racist content in. Racism is the theory of the campaign. It’s designed to boost the turnout where needed with the assumption that it won’t alienate people in the middle.” (Seth Masket/SMOTUS)

“The Trump rally in Madison Square Garden on Sunday was my last chance to see the man in action before the election. So even though the organizers had rejected my request for a media pass (what, The Nation?), my husband and I decided to go anyway … The first thing I noticed was how many Black and brown people were there—lots of Hispanics, more than a sprinkling of Black people and Asians. Of course there were plenty of white people, including elegant Eastern European women and their beefy husbands, young Orthodox Jewish men (where were the women?), and loud young men who burst out regularly with shouts of ‘USA! USA!’ But the picture you may have of Trump rallies as all-white fiestas did not hold true. The first person I talked with was a Black woman holding an enormous American flag over which she’d draped a white embroidered tallit, a Jewish prayer shawl. Her three most important issues were immigration, compulsory vaccination, and ‘boys in the girls’ bathroom.’ She claimed that her 11-year-old daughter had been told in school how to wear rolled-up socks next to her vagina to simulate male genitalia. She was fervently anti-abortion, even though her then-boyfriend had urged her to end her pregnancy. She also told me she had dreams in which God told her what was going to happen.” (Katha Pollitt/The Nation)

“It’s widely established by now that Trump, who avoids all forms of unfriendly press, has rounded out his unwavering support from the right-wing media ecosystem by wholeheartedly embracing the ‘manoverse.’ He’s appeared on bro-casts like This Past Weekend With Theo Von, Andrew Schulz’s Flagrant, and the Nelk Boys’ Full Send, among others, deepening a strategy of playing into the aesthetics and grievances of what’s often described as ‘disaffected young men,’ a demographic that makes up a considerable portion of his base. These appearances take the shape of friendly hangouts where Trump and the hosts cover topics like sports, libertarianism, free speech, dads, and conspiracy theories, a topic that connects with the former president’s vigorous deployment of baseless claims. Trump’s campaign is so happy with this approach, apparently, that it seems to have fully integrated the digital subculture to further power its appeal. That’s how we ended up with the comedian-podcaster Tony Hinchcliffe, a.k.a. the host of the podcast Kill Tony, calling Puerto Rico ‘a floating island of garbage’ at the Trump rally at Madison Square Garden over the weekend.” (Nicholas Quah/NYmag)

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