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US presidential election updates: Republicans in damage control after racist Puerto Rico comments at Trump rally

The fight for Puerto Rican voters emerged as an unlikely campaign theme on Sunday, after superstar Bad Bunny backed Kamala Harris for president, minutes after a speaker at Donald Trump’s triumphalist New York rally made racist remarks about the US territory.

Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, speaking ahead of Trump at the rally in Madison Square Garden, said “there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now, I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”

Millions of mainland US residents with Puerto Rican heritage will be voting on 5 November and the Trump campaign was quick to distance itself from the joke. A slew of Republicans also condemned the remarks, including Rick Scott and María Elvira Salazar from Florida, the state with the largest population of Puerto Ricans in the United States mainland.

Here’s what else happened on Sunday:

Kamala Harris election news

Harris made a pitch for Puerto Rican voters, addressing the need to drive economic growth and job creation. The US territory has struggled after several hurricanes smashed the power grid and faced austerity measures after the local government filed for bankruptcy. Harris promised more effective use of recovery funds for the territory and discussed her plans while visiting a Puerto Rican restaurant in Pennsylvania. Of the swing state’s eligible Latino voters, 580,000 are of Puerto Rican descent.
Harris was in Philadelphia, the largest city in Pennsylvania, on her 14th trip to the state since Joe Biden withdrew from the race. The vice-president spoke at a church service in west Philadelphia and answered questions on student loan debt at a nearby barbershop.
At a rally on Sunday evening, Harris told supporters “no one can sit on the sidelines” ahead of the election, adding: “make no mistake: we will win.” Harris also targeted younger voters in the crowd. “You are rightly impatient for change,” she said. “You, who have only known the climate crisis … You, who grew up with active shooter drills. You, who right now know fewer rights than your mothers and grandmothers.”
Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, released statements acknowledging the sixth anniversary of a mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. “Six years ago today, a white supremacist committed the deadliest attack on American Jews in our nation’s history,” Emhoff wrote. “We honor the lives of those lost on that horrific day by continuing our fight against antisemitism and hate in all its forms.”
Governor Tim Walz joined Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to play the American football video game Madden on a Twitch livestream and talk about the election. The unconventional campaign appearance came as the Harris-Walz campaign tried to drum up support among young male voters.

Donald Trump election news

Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally was marked by racist comments, coarse insults, and dangerous threats about immigrants. Businessman Grant Cardone said Harris “and her pimp handlers will destroy our country”, while Tucker Carlson mocked Harris’s racial background: “As the first Samoan Malaysian low IQ, former California prosecutor to ever be elected president, no, she’s not impressive.” Wrestler Hulk Hogan, Dr Phil star Phil McGraw, and a rare surprise appearance from Melania Trump also garnered cheers from the 20,000 attenders.
Trump promised to introduce a new tax credit for family caregivers and doubled down on his anti-immigration rhetoric. He said his administration would pursue the death penalty for migrants who kill Americans and that he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, avoided calling Russia an “enemy” in an interview on Meet the Press. Vance said Russian President Vladimir Putin was “clearly an adversary” but “we have to be smart about diplomacy”.
Chinese state-affiliated hackers intercepted audio from the phone calls of US political figures, including an unnamed campaign adviser of Donald Trump, the Washington Post reported Sunday. Various media outlets reported on Friday that the Trump campaign was made aware last week that the Republican presidential candidate and his running mate JD Vance were among a number of people inside and outside government whose phone numbers were targeted through the infiltration of Verizon phone systems.

Elsewhere on the campaign trail

Harris’s campaign has delayed taking up Joe Biden’s offers to campaign for his vice-president, Axios reports. “President Biden wants to campaign for vice-president Harris in the last days before the election,” the outlet writes. “Harris’ campaign keeps responding: We’ll get back to you, three people familiar with the dynamic told Axios.” The president will cast his early-voting ballot in the presidential election on Monday, according to the White House.
An array of big tech executives have spoken with Donald Trump in recent days, seeking to rekindle their relationships with the ex-president as the possibility of his return to office looms, CNN reports. In recent weeks, Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Amazon’s Andy Jassy have all called Trump. Earlier this summer, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg also reached out to Trump after his attempted assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania.

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