Despite the Trump ticket’s insistence that the public “stop getting so offended” over racist jokes, plenty of people are still furious about comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s Puerto Rico line.
Actor Aubrey Plaza, for example. Presenting at The Wall Street Journal’s Innovator Awards on Tuesday night, Plaza took a detour from her speech—introducing the WNBA’s A’ja Wilson, recipient of the Innovator Award for Sports—to “very quickly respond” to Hinchcliffe’s commentary.
Among many other insults, Hinchcliffe—the right-wing comic who kicked off Donald Trump’s “lovefest” of a racist rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday night—called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”
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“Thankfully, my sweet abuelita wasn’t here to hear that disgusting remark,” Plaza, whose father’s family is Puerto Rican, continued. “But if she was alive today, I think she would say, ‘Tony Hinchcliffe, go f--- yourself.’ And yes, The Wall Street Journal can quote me on that.”
In the days since his set, Hinchcliffe has attempted to backtrack, tweeting that he “love[s] Puerto Rico and vacation[s] there.”
Nonetheless, the jab went too far even for many of Trump’s fellow Republicans, and left his campaign scrambling to disavow its opening act. Trump is now saying he doesn‘t know who Hinchcliffe is, although his staff reportedly vetted the stand-up’s script—which also included bigoted comments about Black people and Latinos in general—beforehand.
Plaza is just one of the big names to have blasted Hinchcliffe and Trump in the rally’s aftermath. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is Puerto Rican, said Hinchcliffe was “using [his] set to boost neo-Nazis,” while three of Puerto Rico’s most famous entertainers—Ricky Martin, Bad Bunny, and Jennifer Lopez—have thrown their weight behind Kamala Harris instead.
