Kamala Harris Had Lovely Sunday With Puerto Rican Voters, Why Do You Ask?

So much for inroads with Hispanic voters, maybe.

Harris in Philly on Sunday talking about Puerto Rico

Of all the election scenarios we have had running through our mind for months, we’ll admit that “activating millions of Puerto Rican voters against your own campaign by having a Z-list stand-up comedian kick off your Nazi rally by calling the island a ‘floating pile of garbage’” was not one that we hit on.

Clearly this was a lack of imagination on our part.

Because that is what the Donald Trump campaign appears to have done. Especially since, in the immediate aftermath of “comedian” Tony Hinchcliffe’s grotesque racism on Sunday, the most popular Puerto Rican entertainers in the nation — hell, in the world — took to social media to endorse Kamala Harris to their hundreds of millions of followers.

First, Ricky Martin. The singer-songwriter wasted no time in posting a clip of Hinchcliffe’s “joke” while telling his followers “This is what they think of us! Vote Kamala Harris.” Martin had 16 million followers on Instagram on Sunday, and has 18 million as of Monday afternoon.

Then there was Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican singer who has won three Grammys and was the most streamed artist on Spotify for three straight years, from 2020 to 2022. (Yes, he was streamed more than Taylor Swift.) Bad Bunny on Sunday endorsed Harris and shared a video of her talking about her plans for helping Puerto Rico, which still has not recovered from Hurricane Maria in 2017. Bad Bunny has over 45 million followers on Instagram.

And finally, there was Jennifer Lopez, also of Puerto Rican descent. J.Lo on Sunday also shared the same clip as Bad Bunny to her 250 million Instagram followers.

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Donald Trump Held A Rally At Madison Square Garden And HOLY SH*T

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So altogether, while Trump’s campaign was insulting Puerto Ricans so badly that even one of his spokespeople afterwards issued the very rarely-heard-from-Trump “those comments did not align with our candidate’s values” statement, three of the biggest Puerto Rican celebrities were endorsing Kamala Harris to their 315 million followers. (Granted, there is probably some overlap.)

Maybe the Trump campaign should have nominated Tim Walz for vice president. As a former football coach, he could perhaps have warned the cast of drooling 4chan refugees who are apparently running the campaign about giving the other team bulletin board material. That is when an opponent says or does something so galactically stupid or insulting that the coach puts it on a bulletin board in the locker room, where it serves as better motivation for a team than anything he could possibly think of.

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Trump Flies To Puerto Rico To Call Them Fuck-Ups To Their Faces

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Even Republican politicians, particularly those running for re-election like Sen. Rick Scott of Florida (Puerto Rican population: 1.17 million) knew enough to immediately distance themselves from this grotesque racism. And Rick Scott is one of the most shameless human beings to ever speak from the well of the Senate.

So many other Trumpworld and GOP figures were upset. Rolling Stone reported (paywalled) that Latino Republicans were messaging the campaign before the rally was even over demanding that they start in with damage control. They were, needless to say, white-hot angry:

“Who booked this fucking jerk?” a close Trump ally asked Rolling Stone, rhetorically, on Sunday. “Never heard of him.”

Even squinty-eyed gremlin Peter Navarro, not a man known for his racial sensitivity, was hopping mad:

Well, we know Trump used an aid mission after Hurricane Maria to practice his jump shot. Which is probably the hardest he worked during four years in office.

While all this was happening on Sunday, Harris was in the swing state of Pennsylvania (Puerto Rican population: just shy of half a million). In Philadelphia, she went to a Puerto Rican restaurant to talk about her plan to appoint an “economic opportunity taskforce” to study ways to help the island’s economy. She also promised to help rebuild the island’s electrical grid, which has been barely functional since Hurricane Maria, among other things.

As far as we know, Harris did not announce she would try to sell Puerto Rico, as Trump allegedly did after the hurricane devastated it in 2017 and he wondered if he could treat it like a business that had fallen on hard times instead of a United States territory that is home to over 3 million Americans. Imagine being the person who had to tell him that no, Puerto Rico is not a casino on the Atlantic City boardwalk, you can’t just strip the copper out of the walls and then hope you can find some sucker to buy the building.

That’s fine, it’s not as if there are quite a few Puerto Rican voters in swing states. Oops, wait, there are. And Trump has spent months bragging about his inroads with Hispanic voters. Now, one week before Election Day, who knows how many are going to fill out ballots with Sunday’s xenophobic spectacle fresh in their minds.

Oh look, Reuters found a Trump voter, or rather a newly former Trump voter:

Ed Rosa, 60, a New York resident whose parents were born in Puerto Rico and who attended a Trump rally in May, said he had been planning to vote for Trump, but will now sit the election out after Hinchcliffe's comments. He has removed the Trump campaign signs he had placed in the windows and yard of his North Bronx home.

"It wasn't funny at all," said Rosa. "I really believe it was racist. And I was a very strong supporter of Trump until yesterday."

You have to hand it to the Donald Trump campaign. Much like the candidate himself, if there is a way for them to step on their own dicks, they will go out of their way to find it.

OPEN THREAD.

[The Guardian / Rolling Stone / YouTube / Reuters]

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