This is actually one of the stranger developments post Madison Square Garden, which is why I point it out. It was foreseeable that stars like J. Lo, Ritchie Torres, Bad Bunny, others of Puerto Rican descent would be up in arms after Tony Hinchcliffe made tasteless remarks about “the floating island of garbage. It was even foreseeable that congress members such as Maria Elvira Salazar, a Florida Republican, would have condemned the comments. Rick Scott even chimed in, denouncing the rascist barrage. But for Team Trump to declare that Hinchcliffe’s “joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign,” simply invites gales of laughter. Yet that is exactly what happened. An advisor named Danielle Alvarez released that statement, to the belief of precisely nobody.
But his derogatory comments and the slew of offensive remarks offered up by the pillars of Trump’s political movement throughout the hours-long program quickly overshadowed the spectacle of the event that drew thousands of MAGA faithful to the heart of Manhattan and was designed to serve as a capstone to the former president’s two-year attempt at a political comeback.
Trump supporter David Rem called Harris the “anti-Christ.” Businessman Grant Cardone claimed Harris has “pimp handlers.” Radio host Sid Rosenberg called Hillary Clinton, Trump’s 2016 rival and a former secretary of state, a “sick son of a bitch” and cast Democrats more broadly as “Jew-haters and lowlives.”
A Trump adviser said the speakers’ remarks weren’t vetted by the campaign.
Who’s minding the Trump store? I don’t mean the merchandising aspect, that store, I mean who is running the show? Because for the campaign to walk this back later the same night and feign shock the following morning is absurd. And the “why” is what intrigues me.
I’m assuming that this is some last ditch attempt to spinning the MAGA ticket as a decent one, or trying to salvage the “R” behind Trump’s name, and still make it stand for respectability. That horse has left the barn. That horse not only left the barn, it ran into an electrified fence and got fried to a crisp quite a while back. 2016, to be exact.
Decency and MAGA are two things that do not mix and they’re not meant to mix. That’s the point. Trump is the MAGA candidate. The Republican party is now the MAGA party and that’s that. The only thing left to see is how MAGA performs at the polls next week and how all the mail-in ballots and early voting stacks up. Because America is either still America or the MAGA cancer has metastacized and we are terminally ill. I think a giant orange tumor on the body politic is about to be excised and thrown into the toxic waste container. High time and good riddance!
According to a story I saw about this on AOL, Hinchcliffe took some exception to Tim Walz’s taking time out of a “busy schedule” (as Hinchcliffe whined) to criticize him over the comments. As I posted in a comment to that story, it’s rather telling that Hinchcliffe didn’t have a problem with his GOP critics (who, presumably, also took time out of their own “busy” schedules).
And I don’t, for a second, believe that Donald Trump had a problem with the “joke” (considering how Trump responded to the disaster left in the wake of Hurricane Maria in 2017, I’ve got a feeling that Trump laughed at the “joke” and probably made sure to have it recorded so he can play it back any time he wants). I have no doubt the *campaign* wants to do as much damage control as possible but there’s no effin’ way that Trump had a problem with the “joke.”
The disavowal of the comedian was pretty weak…especially considering the campaign invited him and his remarks were put into the teleprompter after somebody’s approval!! This is the essence of far-right “comedy.” It isn’t funny and it isn’t meant to be…it is punching down at others in the guise of humor. As an example, I give you Dennis Miller; one of the funniest people I ever saw in concert; I could barely breath and my abs hurt from laughing so hard. When Miller turned hard to the right, his career ended. He no longer saw the world as absurd and people trying to navigate that world as silly creatures. He saw the world as dark and dangerous because certain people were working hard to destroy it!! I don’t know why Miller took that turn, but he apparently never second-guessed his decision. How awful to live in a world that was no longer full of humorous foibles and was now your evil enemy. What a dark place to live!