Donald Trump has thrown all the blame on the Democrats for making a “big deal” out of comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s remarks at the recent Madison Square Garden rally where he said Puerto Rico was “garbage” and made antisemitic jokes.
But the former president also claimed he had “no idea” who the comedian was, had no say over his contribution and also claimed he had not yet heard the “joke.”
“It was unbelievable,” Trump told Fox & Friends in a phone interview. “Well, I guess somebody put on a comedian, any joke. Here’s a comedian, a joke.”
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Just as the Republican presidential candidate was about to blame the Democrats for the backlash, he chose to speak about what they were “good at.”
“He mentioned Puerto Rico,” Trump continued. “All of a sudden, the Democrats… and they are good at this stuff, by the way, that’s the only thing they’re good at. They’re no good at policy, they’re no good at government. They’re good at other things. They’re very good at cheating, but other than that, they’re not good at anything.”
Tony Hinchcliffe was widely reprimanded for using racist slurs and calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” He managed to combine anti-Latino insults and racist stereotypes with antisemitic tropes in the space of a few minutes.
The Chairman of the Republican Party of Puerto Rico, Ángel Cintrón, was one of many Republicans who publicly criticized his booking, but Trump has taken a different line.
“So let me just say. They come up and a comedian, put in early in the show as a filler. In all fairness, I guess he said some joke. I haven’t heard the joke, but he said some joke, and he mentioned Puerto Rico All of a sudden, they come out with something about Puerto Rico.”
In typical Trump fashion, he dished out superlatives about what he did to Puerto Rico during his presidency.
“Nobody’s been better to Puerto Rico than me,” Trump claimed. “I saved Puerto Rico, where they had some of the worst hurricanes. Really bad. I brought in the hospital ship, the Mercy. I bought in this massive hospital ship. There’s nobody, and Puerto Ricans will tell you that, nobody’s done more for Puerto Rico than me.”
Deep into his meandering monologue, it appeared that Trump failed to fully attribute who among the Democrats he blamed for misrepresenting the so-called comedian’s act.
“They made this one comedian telling one little joke early in the show when nobody had even started going into the arena, practically. They made this comedian, and they made the whole weekend, and they took out this gorgeous, unbelievable patriotic evening, and they sort of stained it a little bit—by a comedian that I have no idea who he is.”
“He’s a man that was put there by very good people and well meaning people, he mentioned Puerto Rico and they made it like a big deal.”
