By Lizzie Ramirez
Donald Trump’s rally in New York on Sunday, Oct. 27, upset many key voters the Republican candidate needs. Rally speaker and comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” and said Latinos “love making babies,” alleging they “don’t pull out” and “come inside like they do our country.”
Since then, the Trump campaign has faced significant backlash. With viral clips making rounds on social media, public figures have spoken out against these remarks. Actress Aubrey Plaza, popular among younger audiences, addressed the “racist joke” and pointed out that she and her family are from Puerto Rico.
“Thankfully, my sweet abuelita wasn’t here to hear that disgusting remark,” Plaza said. “But if she were alive today, I think she would say, ‘Tony Hinchcliffe, go f*** yourself.’”
“We cannot normalize disparaging Latinos, especially in this state, where one in three Nevadans identifies as Latino.”
The Kamala Harris campaign has quickly circulated clips from the rally where other sexist and racist comments were made. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign has moved quickly to distance itself from the remarks, sending newsletters to subscribers in which they allege that Vice President Harris has instead been calling millions of Americans “garbage.”
One Trump adviser said that the remarks at the Trump rally weren’t “vetted by the campaign.” However, a GOP operative told NOTUS, a non-profit non-partisan Washington publication, that Trump is “guilty by association.”
Nevada state Senator Fabian Doñate, chair of the Nevada Latino Legislative Caucus, denounced these racist remarks from the New York rally.
“We cannot normalize disparaging Latinos, especially in this state, where one in three Nevadans identifies as Latino,” Doñate said. “We’ve seen this rhetoric dating back to 2016 when Donald Trump first came down the escalator and called Mexicans criminals and rapists. So, while it’s not surprising, it’s still disheartening to see the same rhetoric repeated, now targeting Puerto Ricans instead of Mexicans.”
Doñate said he’s seen many young Latino voters engaged in this election cycle, motivated in part by the overturning of Roe v. Wade and also by increased awareness of other policies. He believes young Latinos are noticing how people like them are being left behind in the political system while others get the resources they need.
Additionally, Doñate highlighted that many Latinos were frontline workers during the pandemic, including casino and grocery store workers, “and they were the ones getting sick the most.”
“We’ve seen the political system move without us, and many of us are deciding that, rather than waiting for a seat to be given to us, it’s time to step up and claim it ourselves,” he explained.
Though Doñate believes the Latino vote is “the most important” in this election cycle, there are still many split voters whose main concern is the economy and who are leaning toward voting for Trump. However, he noted that several affordable housing bills reached the desk of Nevada’s Trump-supporting governor, only to be vetoed in the last legislative session.
If Harris is elected president, one of her policies would give $25,000 to first-time homebuyers to help them afford a house.
“A vote for Donald Trump will further separate our families from one another,” Doñate said. “And the last thing we need is for millions of workers, who have been the backbone of this country, to be separated from their families.”
Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have vowed that if elected, they will carry out “the largest deportation in American history.”
Doñate said he believes Trump is losing the Latino vote. “The comment he made against Puerto Rico only cemented what we already knew—that Donald Trump is not the right person to be the candidate for president or our next president of the United States.”
Harris, at a Reno campaign stop Thursday, also called Trump an unhinged extremist, referring to his campaign rhetoric.
