Pennsylvania, perhaps the most critical swing state, is home to one of the largest populations of Puerto Ricans in the country. Danielle Alvarez, a Trump campaign senior adviser, said in a statement that Hinchcliffe’s “joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”
Trump’s campaign did not disavow other comments made by warm-up speakers at Sunday’s rally.
At an earlier point in his speech, referring to migrants in general, Hinchcliffe said: “Believe it or not, people, I welcome migrants to the United States of America with open arms. And by open arms, I mean like this.” He waved his hands in a “stop” motion, then added that Latinos “love making babies” and made a crude sex joke about them.
Grant Cardone, a businessman, said Vice President Kamala Harris and “her pimp handlers will destroy our country,” a metaphor that casts the Democratic presidential nominee as a prostitute.
David Rem, a childhood friend of Trump, called Harris “the devil” and “the Antichrist.”
And former Fox News host Tucker Carlson mocked the attention paid to Harris’s racial identity: “She’s just so impressive as the first Samoan, Malaysian, low-IQ former California prosecutor ever to be elected president,” Carlson said. (Harris’s father is from Jamaica, and her mother was from India.)
When Trump took the stage later, he touted his support from people of various religions and races. Polls have shown some softening of support for Democrats among voters of color. “The Republican Party has really become the party of inclusion,” Trump said.
Harris adviser David Plouffe predicted that the earlier speeches would damage Trump politically. Republican incumbents in tight congressional races were conspicuously absent from the lengthy preprogram proceedings, as Democrats hope that tying them to Trump will alienate swing voters.
“Usually pre-game speeches matter little. Pretty remarkable Trump’s MSG warm up acts are all creating controversy and content that will hurt him. Cluster,” Plouffe wrote on social media.
Rep. María Elvira Salazar, a Republican congresswoman from Florida, denounced Hinchcliffe’s comments as “racist” and said on social media that she was “disgusted.”
“This rhetoric does not reflect GOP values,” wrote Salazar, who spent part of her childhood in Puerto Rico.
Harris supporters took note that Puerto Rican pop stars Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin shared a Harris video on their Instagram accounts on Sunday detailing the vice president’s plans for the territory. The three artists have more than 314 million Instagram followers among them.
The rally reflected Trump’s control of the GOP base, his fixation on his home state of New York, his efforts to project swaggering confidence in a tight race and his campaign’s bet that flashy events in Democratic-dominated areas will grab national attention that will help him win votes in more competitive states.
Rather than focus only on swing states with nine days until the election, Trump went all out at a Manhattan venue that calls itself “The World’s Most Famous Arena.” He recently held an event in Coachella, California — the site of the well-known music festival — and also plans to rally in Democratic-leaning Virginia the Saturday before the election.
Trump regularly predicts victory in states that analysts do not consider competitive, at one point claiming that he would win deep-blue California “if Jesus Christ came down and was the vote counter.” He has similarly declared he can win Minnesota, New Jersey and New York and held rallies in each state, sometimes suggesting without evidence that only election fraud could hold him back.
He was joined by a slew of surrogates, including his wife, Melania Trump, who rarely appears on the campaign trail. The Trumps kissed onstage.
Trump hit his standard talking points and lobbed his own familiar insults — calling the media “the enemy of the people,” branding Harris a “low-IQ individual” and defending his decision to label political opponents “the enemy within.”
He called the United States an “occupied country,” said Election Day will be “liberation day” and repeated false claims about the federal government’s hurricane response in North Carolina.
“They haven’t even responded in North Carolina,” Trump said, reiterating his inaccurate claim that the Federal Emergency Management Agency lacks money to respond because it spent the resources on undocumented immigrants. FEMA does spend money on migrants, but there is no evidence that money from its disaster fund — allocated by Congress — was diverted to immigration.
Trump also praised New York City’s Democratic mayor, Eric Adams, who was charged in September with bribery and campaign finance offenses. Adams has pleaded not guilty. Trump suggested without evidence that Adams was being prosecuted for criticizing the Biden administration, drawing a connection with his own unsubstantiated claims of political influence on criminal charges against him.
The former president announced that he would support a tax credit for family caregivers “who take care of a parent or a loved one,” his latest of several targeted tax break plans.
Madison Square Garden has been the venue for a range of political rallies, including conventions for both parties. But Trump’s critics have spent the past several weeks ramping up their warnings that Trump is an authoritarian. John F. Kelly, Trump’s longest-serving White House chief of staff, told the New York Times in comments published last week that Trump told him that Adolf Hitler “did some good things too” and told the Atlantic that Trump expressed admiration for “Hitler’s generals.” Trump denied making the comments, and his campaign has vehemently rejected comparisons between Trump and Hitler.
Tim Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president, on Sunday sought to link Trump’s event to a Nazi rally held at Madison Square Garden in 1939. “There’s a direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the mid-1930s at Madison Square Garden,” Walz said while campaigning in Nevada.
At the rally, multiple speakers addressed the comparison and pushed back.
“Out of character for me to speak at a Nazi rally,” said radio host Sid Rosenberg, who is Jewish. He said the entire Democratic Party is “a bunch of degenerates.”
Earlier, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. used language that echoed the baseless white-supremacist conspiracy theory known as “the great replacement,” which holds that shadowy elites are trying to replace White Americans with non-White immigrants and has inspired violence against minorities.
“The Democrat Party has forgotten about Americans,” Trump Jr. said. “Rather than cater to Americans, they decided you know what, it would just be easier to replace them with people who would be reliable voters.”
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, also addressed the crowd Sunday. Musk has poured well over $100 million into a political action committee that is supporting Trump and handling much of the door-knocking to turn out Trump voters.
“We’re somewhat preaching to the converted in this stadium,” Musk said. “But there’s a lot of people out there who — who need to vote for President Trump.”
Other speakers included Carlson; pro wrestler Hulk Hogan; former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who championed Trump’s false claims of election fraud; and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who suspended his independent presidential bid in August and endorsed Trump.
Trump said that as president he would give Kennedy — a prominent promoter of false conspiracy theories about vaccines — significant policy input on food and medicine. “I’m going to let him go wild on health,” Trump said. “I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’ve got to let him go wild on medicines.”
During his speech, Guiliani touted the significance of the rally’s location. “This is the most iconic venue of venues in the United States,” Giuliani said. “This is where a Republican’s not supposed to come. Which is why Donald Trump came here!” The crowd cheered.
New York has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1984, when Ronald Reagan won almost every state.
New York does have competitive congressional races, and Republican upsets there helped the GOP retake the House in 2022. Trump’s visit to New York could help galvanize the party base, and on Saturday he joined a tele-town hall with GOP nominees for battleground House seats.
Some of Trump’s congressional allies, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York), spoke at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. But vulnerable Republican incumbents did not.
Trump fans flocked from all around the region to attend the rare GOP rally in New York City. Police closed many blocks around the venue to traffic. Protesters across the street blasted an upbeat song featuring the lyrics “Donald Trump’s a convicted felon.”
Elisa Moller, a New Jersey resident in her 50s who attended with her family, said the Madison Square Garden rally made sense because “Donald Trump is New York.”
“This is his hometown. This is where he’s from,” echoed Erin Chang, 49, who said she has been door-knocking for Trump in swing-state Pennsylvania and wore American-flag-patterned clothes from head to toe.
Some attendees believed that Trump could put blue states in play. “I have a feeling he’s going to turn New York red,” Gina Billera said as she waited in line.
Isaac Arnsdorf, Leigh Ann Caldwell, Sabrina Rodriguez and Dylan Wells contributed to this report.
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