The Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, participates in a Fox News Town Hall with Sean Hannity at the New Holland Arena on Sept. 4, 2024 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump repeated his hard-line immigration position in an hourlong appearance from his Florida country club Tuesday, even as Democrats highlight the racist rhetoric his campaign and allies have used to describe Latinos in the closing week of the presidential race.
Speaking at Mar-a-Lago, the former president made passing references to the criticism his rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday received — including comparisons to a 1939 rally by American Nazis in the same building — but did not directly address the uproar caused by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s jokes targeting Puerto Rico and Latino immigrants.
Trump sought to change the narrative that has followed the New York rally, calling the atmosphere “an absolute lovefest.”
“I don’t think anybody has ever seen anything like what happened the other night at Madison Square Garden, the love, the love, the love in that room. It was breathtaking,” he said.
“You know, they started to say, ‘Well, in 1939 the Nazis used Madison Square Garden.’ … What a terrible thing to say, right? Because, you know, they’ve used Madison Square Garden many times. Many people have used it, but nobody’s ever had a crowd like that.”
The former president continued promoting his uncompromising position on immigration, which has been the primary focus of his campaign, employing racist language to describe the issue.
“I know we talk about inflation and the economy, but there’s, to me, there’s nothing, nothing more important than the fabric of our country being destroyed by people placed there, violently placed there,” he said. “I think what’s happening on the border is the single biggest issue, and I’m seeing it more and more when I speak.”
Trump repeated the debunked claim that Aurora, Colorado, had been overrun by Venezuelan gangs and claimed, without evidence, that “a minimum” of 325,000 migrant children had been brought into the country as “slaves or sex slaves.”
Trump did not take questions at the event that had been billed as a press conference.
Democrats, including the party’s presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, sought to contrast the language Trump and his allies have used about Latinos with that used by Harris.
“Donald Trump spends full time trying to have Americans point their finger at each other, fans the fuel of hate and division,” Harris told reporters Monday about Trump’s New York rally. “And that’s why people are exhausted with him.”
A Tuesday press release from the Democratic National Committee noted Harris campaigned at a Puerto Rican restaurant in Pennsylvania on Sunday night at nearly the same time Hinchcliffe called the territory a “floating island of garbage.” Hinchcliffe also made a lewd joke about Latino immigrants.
Trump also promised “a new golden” age of closed borders at the event.
“Donald Trump’s MAGA Republican Party is driven by hate and extremism – and that’s exactly what the Trump campaign chose to relay to voters as his closing message in this campaign,” DNC Co-Executive Director Monica Guardiola said.
“These hateful and racist attacks reveal a deeper truth about Trump’s Project 2025 agenda: he will wind back the clock on our rights, rip children from their mothers’ arms, disinvest in our communities, and shutter our small businesses so that he can pad the pockets of his billionaire backers.”
The statement also said the party would launch billboard ads near Pennsylvania’s Puerto Rican communities featuring a Washington Post headline that quoted Hinchcliffe.
“Trump rally speakers lob racist insults, call Puerto Rico ‘Island of Garbage,’” the billboards read, according to the release.
Pennsylvania, perhaps the most critical of seven swing states in next week’s election, is home to about 8% of the 5.6 million Puerto Ricans who live in the United States, the fourth-highest concentration of any state.
The DNC billboards will be placed on highways near Allentown, Reading and Philadelphia, which have significant Puerto Rican populations, the DNC said.
Trump was scheduled to make a campaign stop in Allentown on Tuesday afternoon.
At Mar-a-Lago Tuesday morning, Trump sought to frame Harris and Democrats as anti-American agents, a continuation of a theme he has stressed in the closing weeks of the campaign that his political opponents are “the enemy within.”
Commentators and experts on extremism have warned that language veers toward fascism.
In calling his own campaign event one of love — despite the aggressive anti-immigration position — Trump said Harris was running “a campaign of hate.”
“Really, perhaps more than anything else, it’s a campaign of hate, campaign of absolute hate,” he said. “I said yesterday that she’s a vessel. She is a vessel. It’s a very big, powerful party with smart people — they have to be smart, but it’s vicious. They’re vicious, and they’re perhaps even trying to destroy our country.”
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