US election live: speaker defends his racist Puerto Rico joke at Trump rally as backlash grows

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Good morning, it’s Richard Luscombe in the US, taking over from my colleague Daniel Lavelle. I’ll be guiding you through the next few hours of what promises to be a lively first day of the last full week of an exhausting, and bruising, presidential election campaign.

• Joe Biden is expected to cast his vote in Wilmington, Delaware, this morning, before heading for the White House. His first scheduled public remarks for the day are at a Diwali celebration this afternoon, but we’ll be watching out for any comments he makes as he casts his ballot.

• Kamala Harris will be in Saginaw, Michigan, this afternoon, meeting with union workers before a rally in Ann Arbor on Monday evening.

• Donald Trump will be in Georgia, with an event in Atlanta set for this evening.

• Wisconsin is where we’ll find the vice-presidential hopefuls, Democrat Tim Walz appearing in Manitowoc and Waukesha before joining Harris later in Ann Arbor. Republican JD Vance will be Wausau and Racine.

As we prepare for today’s feast of election fare, it’s worth catching up on our account of the story of the day (so far at least), Trump’s frenzy of racism, anger and vitriol last night at Madison Square Garden, written by my colleagues Adam Gabbatt and Ed Pilkington:

Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz travels to key swing state to win support among the Navajo Nation.

Walz visited Window Rock, Arizona, the Navajo Nation’s capital, on Saturday afternoon, aiming to connect with Navajo voters just 10 days before the general election.

“It is a privilege to be standing here on Navajo land,” said Walz, the governor of Minnesota. “I am grateful you would see fit to bring me here. I am here today because there are 10 more days until the election and we are not taking any vote for granted. We are here to show respect to the Navajo Nation and earn your vote.”

Walz, whose state is home to 11 federally recognized Native American tribes, spoke on the importance of Indigenous communities.

“The highest law is to honor tribal sovereignty, promote tribal consultation, ensure tribal self-determination across this country,” Walz said. “If tribal nations are doing well and your kids are doing well, the rest of the country is going to be just fine.”

Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz addresses the crowd at a “Native Americans for Harris-Walz” event at MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. (Rachel Aston/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP) Photograph: Rachel Aston/AP

Liz Cheney 'confident' Kamala Harris will win election

Liz Cheney, the former Republican congresswoman, said she was “confident” that Kamala Harris would be the next president.

“We are not cruel, and we aren’t evil, and we don’t elect people who are,” she told an event called “An Afternoon With Liz Cheney,” held at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark.

Cheney claimed that during the Capitol riot, Representative Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio, offered her is arm and help with evacuating the building. “Get away from me — you effing did this,” Cheney said she responded.

She said that the decisions by The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times not to publish endorsements over the next president was “all about fear.”

Fear is “a tool that every autocrat uses,” she said.

A second columnist for the Washington Post resigns in wake of the newspaper’s failure to back a candidate for president.

Michele Norris announced on X that ”of yesterday, I have decided to resign from my role as a columnist for The Washington Post — a newspaper that I love. In a moment like this, everyone needs to make their own decisions. This is the reason for mine.”

She added that the Post’s non-endorsement was a “terrible mistake” and “an insult to the paper’s own longstanding standard of regularly endorsing candidates since 1976.”

Tony Hinchcliffe doubles down on hateful jokes at Trump rally

In response to Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s objection to his racist jokes, made at Donald Trump’s rally held at Madison Square Garden on Sunday night, Tony Hinchcliffe posted on X:

These people have no sense of humor. Wild that a vice presidential candidate would take time out of his “busy schedule” to analyze a joke taken out of context to make it seem racist. I love Puerto Rico and vacation there. I made fun of everyone…watch the whole set. I’m a comedian Tim…might be time to change your tampon.

Ocasio-Cortez was with the vice-president, Tim Walz, at an event when news of the comments emerged.

AOC: racist Puerto Rico joke at Trump rally 'super upsetting'

Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez says she found Tony Hinchcliffe’s jokes at Trump’s rally “super upsetting”

Hinchcliffe’s racist jokes included:

“There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”

“These Latinos, they love making babies too. Just know that. They do. They do. There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside. Just like they did to our country.”

Democratic representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), who is of Puerto Rican descent, was watching the comedian’s set with Vice President candidate Tim Walz and commented:

When you have some a-hole calling Puerto Rico ‘floating garbage,’ know that that’s what they think about you. It’s what they think about anyone who makes less money than them… I want every Puerto Rican in Philadelphia and Reading and across the country to see this clip”

Tech titan Elon Musk spoke at the MSG rally and introduced Melania Trump.

Trump’s claim that Musk is a genius is undermined slightly by his business record. Several of Musk’s enterprises, including Tesla and SpaceX, have relied on US subsidies and government contracts.

Musk’s stewardship of Tesla has been marked by over-promising and under-delivering on a range of products, including fully self-driving vehicles; the so-called Hyperloop, which was intended to revolutionise transport, ended up being scrapped to build a parking lot; two million Tesla cars had to be recalled due to safety concerns, and the Tesla Roadster, a car promised to consumers in 2017, was delayed again this year.

Since purchasing Twitter (now X) for $44bn, the value of the social media platform has been reduced by over half.

Musk has also faced criticism after reports that he has spoken privately with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Elon Musk at last night’s rally Photograph: Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images

Trump campaign distances itself from racist jokes at rally

More on this shortly, in other developments:

• Trump will join National Faith Advisory Board for a faith summit in Atlanta this afternoon and will attend a rally in the city later.

• Harris and her vice-presidential pick, Tim Walz, to hold a joint campaign rally in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on Monday.

• Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen are holding a campaign rally for Harris in Philadelphia.