Trump says his New York meeting was 'like a love fest'

“The love in that room. It was breathtaking,” he said. “It was like a love fest, an absolute love fest. And it was my honor to be involved.”

Harris’ campaign and Trump’s critics have seized on the event, which began with a preshow featuring speakers who made racist comments against Latinos, including Puerto Ricans, as well as Black people, Jews and Palestinians, along with sexist insults aimed at the Democratic rival from Trump. , Vice President Kamala Harris and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s set, in which he joked that Puerto Rico was a “floating island of trash,” has sparked particular outrage given the electoral importance of Puerto Ricans living in Pennsylvania and other key swing states. The comments were condemned by some of Trump’s key Republican allies. His campaign took the rare step of publicly distancing itself from Hinchcliffe’s joke about Puerto Rico, but not other comments.

Just a week before Election Day, some Trump allies have expressed alarm that the rally, which was supposed to highlight his closing message in grand New York fashion, has instead served as a distraction and fueled voters’ concerns about Trump’s rhetoric and propensity to controversy has highlighted. in the final part of the race.

On Tuesday, Trump gathered reporters at Mar-a-Lago where he tried to get back at Harris, taking aim at his rival’s record on the border and inflation, saying that “on issue after issue they broke it ” and “I’m going to fix it and fix it very quickly.

Trump — who has painted a dark and disturbing picture of life in America since taking office — had several speakers who shared painful stories, including Tammy Nobles, whose daughter was allegedly murdered by gang members living in the country illegally.

He also announced that, if he wins, he will seize the assets of criminal gangs and drug cartels and use those assets “to set up a compensation fund to compensate victims of migrant crime.”

Trump, who did not take questions at the event, accused Harris of waging a “campaign of absolute hatred” and claimed she “keeps talking about Hitler and the Nazis because her record is terrible.”

He did not elaborate on what the other speakers at his meeting said, but noted that Democrats had pointed to a Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939, when more than 20,000 people attended an event organized by the German American Bund, a pro-Nazi organization. group hanging swastikas next to a large portrait of George Washington.

Several speakers on Sunday referenced that event, including former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, who said, “I don’t see any stinking Nazis here.”

In an interview with ABC News on Tuesday, Trump said he did not know the comedian who made the most blatant insults, but he did not denounce the comments either.

‘I don’t know him, someone put him there. I don’t know who he is,” he said, according to the station, insisting he had not heard Hinchcliffe’s comments. But when asked what he thought, Trump “did not take the opportunity to denounce them and reiterated that he had not heard the comments,” ABC reported.

The comments have sparked outrage among Puerto Rican leaders, who have just a week to go before the election.

Puerto Rico Republican Party President Ángel Cintrón called Hinchcliffe’s “poor attempt at comedy” “disgraceful, ignorant and totally reprehensible.”

“There is no room for these kinds of absurd and racist comments. They do not represent the conservative values of Republicanism anywhere in our country,” Cintrón said in a statement.

Trump was scheduled to campaign later Tuesday in Pennsylvania, a state where the Latino voter population has nearly tripled since 2000, from 206,000 to 620,000 in 2023, according to Census Bureau figures. More than half of those are eligible Puerto Rican voters.

He was scheduled to hold a rally Tuesday evening in Allentown, which has a large Hispanic population, which would give him a chance to speak directly to voters who may be offended.

Angelo Ortega, a longtime Allentown resident and former Republican who plans to vote for Harris this time, said he couldn’t believe what he heard about Trump’s rally.

“I don’t know if my jaw dropped or if I was just so irritated and angry. I didn’t know what to feel,” said Ortega, who was born in New York but whose father was from Puerto Rico. Ortega has campaigned for Harris and said he is aware of at least one Hispanic Republican voter who plans to switch from Trump to Harris as a result of Hinchcliffe’s comments.

‘They’ve had it. They’ve had it. They listened to (Trump), but they said they thought this was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Ortega, a member of the advocacy group Make the Road PA.

Trump “didn’t make the comment about Puerto Rico. The comedian made the comment about Puerto Rico. But it is his political forum.”

The Harris campaign has released an ad that will run online in battleground states targeting Puerto Rican voters and highlighting the comedian’s comments.

Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in New York, Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Michael Rubinkam in Allentown, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.