The podcaster who provoked an angry backlash against Donald Trump’s campaign with a racist joke about Puerto Rico reportedly tested out the gags at a comedy club the night before delivering them at Sunday’s televised rally at Madison Square Garden.
Tony Hinchcliffe, whose 11-minute set has thrown Trump’s team into damage-limitation mode a week before the presidential election, made the same quip, calling the territory “a floating island of garbage”, at the Stand club in New York on Saturday, according to NBC.
The joke bombed, drawing just a few awkward chuckles, NBC said, citing one of its own producers and three audience members.
Hinchcliffe, who told patrons several times that he would be performing at Trump’s rally, responded by saying he hoped it would get a better reaction the following day.
The performer’s act at the Madison Square Garden event has threatened to undermine Trump’s support among Latino voters – including many of Puerto Rican heritage – in battleground states where he is running neck and neck with Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.
Trump has not commented on the remarks, but has since attempted, implausibly, to claim he did not know Hinchcliffe, despite the fact that the podcaster has a huge following, opened Trump’s rally and was vetted by his campaign.
Trump could, however, be forced to wade into the issue on Tuesday evening, when he visits the Pennsylvania city of Allentown, where more than 50% of people are Latino – a group also singled out for insults in Hinchcliffe’s Sunday routine.
It is unclear if Hinchcliffe had previously workshopped the other jokes he delivered at Madison Square Garden. The routine featured a fusillade of racially offensive comments, including one about how Latinos “love making babies”. He also invoked racist stereotypes about Black people, Jewish people and Palestinians.
But the comment that drew most attention went: “There’s a lot going on. There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”
The line provoked such an angry reaction, including among Republicans, that the Trump campaign was forced to disown it within hours.
“This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign,” a senior campaign adviser, Danielle Alvarez, said.
However, questions continued to be asked about why Hinchcliffe was allowed to make such an offensive joke, amid conflicting signals about whether the Trump campaign knew about it in advance.
Campaign staff had asked all speakers to submit a draft of their speeches before they were loaded them into a teleprompter, the Bulwark reported. The process reportedly resulted in the vetoing of one joke in which Hinchcliffe had planned to label Harris with an obscenity.
The site reported sources as saying other incendiary lines were not caught because Hinchcliffe ad-libbed them – a questionable explanation given the sheer number of offensive jibes he uttered in quick succession.
Even if true, it is unclear whether the Puerto Rico joke was read off a teleprompter.
Vianca Rodríguez, the deputy director of Hispanic communications for the Trump campaign, told the Spanish-language Noticias Telemundo television channel that staffers did not “have absolute control” over what speakers said at the rally.
There was little doubting the seriousness of the political blowback.
Angel M Cintrón, the chair of Puerto Rico’s Republican party, threatened to withdraw his endorsement of Trump unless he personally apologised. The Catholic archbishop of the island’s capital, San Juan, Roberto González Nieves, wrote to the ex-president urging him to apologise.
The Guardian also reported outrage among voters in Pennsylvania, where 472,000 people of Puerto Rican heritage live, according to the US Census Bureau.
Seasoned Republican operatives saw it as a political own goal on an occasion that had been designed to project Trump’s closing campaign argument. It was also seen as damaging to his electoral chances when he is in a knife-edge contest to win Pennsylvania – a key battleground home to about 580,000 Latino voters.
“Whoever thought he was good to book, they misjudged the room,” David Urban, an adviser in Trump’s 2016 successful campaign, told Politico, referring to the comedian.
Anthony D’Esposito, a New York Republican House member, posted on X: “I’m proud to be Puerto Rican. My mom was born and raised in Puerto Rico. It’s a beautiful island with a rich culture and an integral part of the USA. The only thing that’s ‘garbage’ was a bad comedy set. Stay on message.”
The Harris campaign has sought to capitalise on the controversy by circulating an ad throughout the state but targeting Latino communities and focusing on Hinchcliffe’s offensive joke.
Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, adopted an unapologetic stance, telling NBC that Americans “need to stop getting so offended”.
“I’m just so over it,” he said. “I’ve heard about the joke, I haven’t actually seen the joke that you mentioned, but I think that it’s telling that Kamala Harris’s closing message is essentially that all of Donald Trump’s voters are Nazis, and [that] you should get really pissed off about a comedian telling a joke.”