Trump seeks to disavow comic’s racist jokes at Madison Square Garden rally

The Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, continued to insist on Tuesday night that he doesn’t know the comedian who made racist and offensive jokes at his New York rally on Sunday, and that the comic “probably” shouldn’t have been there.

In an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity, Trump was asked about racist and offensive jokes made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at the Trump rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” and made disparaging remarks about its people.

“I have no idea who he is,” Trump told Hannity. “Somebody said there was a comedian that jokes about Puerto Rico or something and I have no idea who he is. Never saw him, never heard of him, and don’t want to hear of him.”

Trump said: “They put a comedian in, which everybody does.”

“You throw comedians in, you don’t vet them and go crazy. It’s nobody’s fault. But somebody said some bad things,” he added.

The former president then said that his critics have “taken somebody that has nothing to do with the party, has nothing to do with us, who said something, and they try and make a big deal”.

“I can’t imagine that it’s a big deal,” Trump added.

Later in the interview, Hannity asked Trump whether he wished Hinchcliffe hadn’t been at the rally, to which the former president replied: “Yeah, I don’t know if it’s a big deal or not, but I don’t want anybody making nasty jokes or stupid jokes, and probably he shouldn’t have been there, yeah.”

The comments made by Hinchcliffe on Sunday night quickly caused anger, uproar and outrage among Puerto Ricans and other voters nationwide.

Online, many celebrities and politicians quickly criticized the remarks. The president of the Republican party’s branch in Puerto Rico also demanded that Trump issue an apology for the racist jokes, and on Tuesday, Puerto Rico’s largest newspaper, El Nuevo Día, endorsed Kamala Harris for president.

On Tuesday evening, the actor Aubrey Plaza also took a moment at the Wall Street Journal Innovator Awards to call out the comments.

“I just wanted to very quickly respond to the racist joke that was made at that Trump rally about Puerto Rico, where most of my family is from,” Plaza said on stage, according to Variety. “Thankfully, my sweet abuelita wasn’t here to hear that disgusting remark.

“But if she was alive today, I think she would say, ‘Tony Hinchcliffe, go fuck yourself.’ And yes, the Wall Street Journal can quote me on that.”

On Monday, a senior campaign adviser for Donald Trump told CNN that the speeches from the Madison Square Garden rally were vetted beforehand, but insisted that the more offensive remarks were ad-libbed and not on any draft given to the campaign.

Many of the remarks from Sunday appeared to be read from teleprompters, CNN added, indicating that they had been approved by someone within the event’s planning team. Another Trump campaign adviser told the broadcaster that they were uncertain as to how the racist language had made it to the stage.

The Bulwark also reported on Monday that Trump’s campaign staff had asked all the speakers to submit drafts of their speeches before they were loaded into the teleprompter, which reportedly resulted in the objection to one joke in which Hinchcliffe had planned to label Harris with an obscenity.

Earlier on Tuesday, Trump told ABC News that he didn’t hear any of the comments made by Hinchcliffe at the rally and that he didn’t know the comedian.

Then on Tuesday afternoon, during a campaign event at Mar-a-Lago, Trump described the New York rally as a “love fest”.

“I don’t think anybody has ever seen anything like what happened the other night at Madison Square Garden,” Trump said. “The love in that room, it was breathtaking.”

He added: “Politicians that have been doing this for a long time said there’s never been an event so beautiful, it was like a love fest, an absolute love fest, and it was my honor to be involved.”

Since the New York rally, Trump and his campaign have tried to do damage control.

At his Pennsylvania rally on Tuesday, Trump praised the Puerto Rican community, saying that “nobody loves our Latino community and our Puerto Rican community more than I do” before claiming that he had done a lot for the island as president.