Donald Trump misgendered Reggaeton star Nicky Jam at a campaign rally on Friday in Las Vegas, introducing the male singer as a “hot” woman. The former president then came face-to-face with his blunder as the vocalist joined him on stage.
“Do you know Nicky? She’s hot!” the former president told the crowd following the musician's endorsement of the GOP presidential ticket. Jam, donning a MAGA hat, then appeared on stage, prompting the Republican nominee to obliquely address his mistake.
“Oh look! Come here. I’m glad he came up,” Trump said.
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Jam, who was born in Massachusetts but moved to Puerto Rico as a child, paid no mind to the former president’s slip up, “People that come from where I come from, they don’t meet the president. So I’m lucky,” he said to rally goers, before addressing Trump: “We need you. We need you back, right? We need you to be the president.”
Following the rally, Jam joked about Trump’s error, posting a picture to Instagram with the caption, “Nicky jam la potra la bichota” (which roughly translates to, “Nicky Jam the hot woman the female boss”) along with 22 crying-laughing emojis.
The musician’s endorsement, however, also led to backlash. The Mexican rock band Manà pulled their collab with Jam, “De Pies a Cabeza,” from the internet on Sunday.
“Maná doesn’t work with racists,” read a statement from the band on Instagram.
“For the past 30 years, Maná has supported and defended the rights of Latinos around the world,” the post continued in Spanish. “There is no business or promotion that is worth more than the dignity of our people.
Kamala Harris’ campaign also took to social media following the campaign event, opting to troll her political opponent over his “hot” woman comment by posting a clip of the former president at his rally to X.
Others on the social media app joined in, poking fun of Trump’s apparent lack of knowledge on Latin music and culture. “Happy Hispanic Heritage Month!” wrote one user alongside a screenshot of the former president's infamous 2016 Cinco de Mayo post. Another riffed on an already-popular meme of ABC anchor David Muir fact-checking the former president during his Sept. 10 presidential debate against Harris, captioning the photo “Mr. President, Nicky Jam is not a “she” he is in fact, a man.”
The “Latin music superstar,” as described by Trump, joins the likes of Kid Rock, Billy Ray Cyrus, and Jason Aldean in supporting the former president. Harris, meanwhile, has received a veritable choir’s worth of musician endorsements, most recently from Taylor Swift following this past week’s debate.