Floating island of garbage claims most racist parts of the speech at its rally were improvised
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Paul’s question about whether Tom Hinchliffe’s speech was vetted by the campaign has been answered, and the answer is “sort of”:
DONALD TRUMP’S CAMPAIGN WAS LEFT scrambling Sunday night after roast-comic Tony Hinchcliffe made insulting jokes about Hispanic and black people on stage at the ex-president’s Madison Square Garden rally.
The lines sparked immediate backlash and even condemnation from fellow Republicans. But four top campaign sources said it could have been even worse.
“He had a joke calling [Vice President Kamala] Harris a ‘cunt,’” a campaign insider involved in the discussions about the event told The Bulwark. “Let’s say it was a red flag.”
Hinchcliffe’s remarks—and the ensuing backlash—has sparked questions about how such an offensive speech was allowed at such a high-profile rally; whether it was deliberate; and why a presidential campaign would elevate a roast-master comic edgelord in the closing days of a tight race for the White House.
Campaign staffers had asked all speakers to submit drafts of their speeches ahead of time—before they were loaded into the teleprompter—according to the aforementioned sources. Once the objectionable “cunt” joke was spotted, the sources said, a staffer asked Hinchcliffe to strike it. He complied.
Those sources insisted that they did not spot the other objectionable lines in Hinchcliffe’s speech prior to him delivering it because they were ad-libbed. Hinchcliffe couldn’t be reached for comment.
The shock comic took the stage early during the MSG rally. In the course of delivering his eleven-minute-and-forty-second set, he called Puerto Rico an island of trash and joked about a black person carving watermelons for Halloween.
About three hours after the performance, as condemnation was pouring in from left, right, and center, the Trump campaign was forced to take the rare step of distancing itself from one of their speakers—though it only separated itself from the “trash” line and not the watermelon one.
There are two possibilities here: that Hinchliffe really did improvise the most racist parts of his speech, or that the material was there and the campaign only cut the slurs that applied to the literal majority of the population. My guess would be it’s the latter and they’re covering their ass, but who knows. Either way, it hangs on the campaign — they obviously knew who they were putting out there.
Anyway, the puerile misogynist billionaire who is the de facto campaign chair decided to take care of the c-work part, although someone finally convinced him that this wasn’t a great idea:
NEW: Elon Musk quietly deletes post from his pro-Trump PAC calling Kamala
Harris a “C-word” (tap to see deleted post text) pic.twitter.com/MzH5M7cq0l— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) October 28, 2024
I also agree with Paul that there’s no way to tell if this will have an effect, or if so whether or not it will help. But I would caution against just accepting the Savvy conventional wisdom that it’s Trump so nothing moves the needle. He is after all at best in a statistical tie, as a challenger in a context in which incumbents are being routed all over the western world — he’s not popular! The fact they’re certainly not acting like this doesn’t matter doesn’t prove that it does. They may be wrong, or they may be playing a double game. But while optimism is all too rarely rewarded in American politics my guess is that they’re right to be worried about it.
Tucker was also having a really normal one yesterday:
This is an openly hateful campaign trafficking in some of the most vile rhetoric, confident of a landslide and convinced that they can make no misstep, because they're betting people won't care.
And we're out here asking if Harris is too divisive for calling Trump a fascist. https://t.co/t9nNbSJTOX— Lakshya Jain (@lxeagle17) October 28, 2024
There was so much racism and misogyny at MSG only so much of it could go viral.