Anti-Puerto Rico comments at Trump rally spur outrage as Bad Bunny supports Harris

The artist’s gesture of support came as a number of speakers at a Trump event in New York made racist and disparaging comments about Puerto Ricans and other Latinos.

8 min

Bad Bunny at the 2024 Met Gala. (Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)

By Sabrina Rodriguez

Updated October 27, 2024 at 8:49 p.m. EDT|Published October 27, 2024 at 8:00 p.m. EDT

Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican recording artist and one of the biggest superstars in the world, on Sunday offered his support for Kamala Harris’s candidacy for president, sharing a video of her plans for Puerto Rico on his Instagram — a move that came just moments after a speaker at Donald Trump’s rally in New York City referred to the U.S. territory as a “floating island of garbage.”

Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, known as Bad Bunny, shared on his story to his 45.6 million Instagram followers a video from Harris’s official account in which the vice president outlines her vision for Puerto Rico. A source close to Bad Bunny confirmed the post was the artist announcing his support for Harris.

“I will never forget what Donald Trump did and what he did not do when Puerto Rico needed a caring and a competent leader,” Harris said in the video, which he shared four times, focusing on this portion of her remarks in three of the shares. “He abandoned the island, tried to block aid after back-to-back devastating hurricanes and offered nothing more than paper towels and insults.”

Puerto Rican artists Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin also shared Harris’s video on their Instagram accounts, each expressing their support for her. The three artists alone have more than 314 million Instagram followers between them.

Bad Bunny’s support for Harris came as she held a rally in Philadelphia, which has a large Puerto Rican population. Earlier in the day, Harris made a stop at a Puerto Rican restaurant in north Philadelphia, where she outlined her plans for the island and was met with supporters chanting “¡Sí se puede!”

Both Harris and Trump have made efforts to appeal to Puerto Ricans and other Latinos, who have historically leaned toward Democrats but have appeared to shift a bit toward Trump in recent years.

About two hours before Bad Bunny shared the Harris video for the first time, podcaster and comedian Tony Hinchcliffe disparaged Puerto Rico in remarks at Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden.

“I don’t know if you know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” said Hinchcliffe, host of the “Kill Tony” podcast, speaking in New York, the city with the largest number of Puerto Ricans outside of the U.S. territory.

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Hinchcliffe also made offensive comments about Latinos more broadly, going on a vulgar riff about how they “love making babies.”

The Trump campaign on Sunday night sought to distance itself from Hinchcliffe’s comments.

“This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign,” Danielle Alvarez, a senior adviser to the campaign, said in a statement.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’s running mate, expressed their anger at the comment as they spoke on live-streaming platform Twitch and said they hope Puerto Ricans across the country see the clip. Walz urged Puerto Ricans — hundreds of thousands of whom live in battleground states across the country — to vote and “send them a message on this.”

“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,” said Ocasio-Cortez, who is Puerto Rican.

Hinchcliffe defended his comments in response, saying Ocasio-Cortez and Walz 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,” he wrote on X. “I love Puerto Rico and vacation there. I made fun of everyone … watch the whole set. I’m a comedian Tim,” he added, before making a crude remark about Walz.

Hinchcliffe’s comments drew some backlash Sunday within the Republican Party. Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Florida) said she was “disgusted” by what he said and that “this rhetoric does not reflect GOP values.”

Sen. Rick Scott (R) of Florida, which is home to the largest population of Puerto Ricans in the United States mainland, also slammed the comments as false.

“This joke bombed for a reason. It’s not funny and it’s not true,” Scott, who is up for reelection this year, wrote in a post on X.

Kevin Muñoz, a Harris campaign spokesperson, called the comments “quite a split screen” from Harris’s announcement on her agenda for Puerto Rico.

In her video, Harris outlined how her policy toward Puerto Rico will include improving health services, bring down the cost of housing, rebuilding and modernizing the island’s energy grid. She also announced, if elected, she would create a task force where the federal government would work with private, nonprofit and community leaders to help foster economic growth and create jobs on the island, especially for young Puerto Ricans.

Democrats for months have hoped Bad Bunny would weigh in on the race given his huge influence with Latinos and young people. The belief has been that a Bad Bunny endorsement could give Harris a boost, particularly with young Latino men, who the campaign has struggled to mobilize. There were some doubts on whether he would weigh in on the presidential race, given that Puerto Ricans on the island cannot vote for president and he has long been focused on politics on the island.

Bad Bunny, however, has been vocally critical of Trump in the past. In 2017, he arrived at the “Somos Live” benefit concert, which was held to raise money for disaster relief, weeks after Hurricane Maria, wearing T-shirt that read: “¿Tu eres twitero o presidente?” (“Are you a tweeter or president?”) And he explicitly criticized Trump with vulgarities in a 2020 song.

Trump’s administration withheld billions of dollars in hurricane relief for the island. He threw paper towel rolls at people when he visited to deliver aid supplies on the island after it was ravaged by Hurricane Maria in 2017, a move critics panned as an offensive gesture. While president, Trump reportedly joked about trading Puerto Rico for Greenland to get rid of the U.S. territory.

The Harris campaign has repeatedly sought to remind Puerto Rican voters of Trump’s treatment of the island under her administration. Earlier this month, the campaign released an ad with Marc Anthony — another Puerto Rican artist and one of the most popular salsa performers in the world — where he endorsed Harris and reminded viewers of Trump’s actions after Hurricane Maria.

“This election goes way beyond political parties. Let’s remember what the United States represents and stands for: United,” he said in the ad.

The battle for Puerto Rican voters has been most pronounced in Pennsylvania, a battleground state that is home to the third-largest population of Puerto Ricans outside the island. There are more than 615,000 eligible Latino voters, according to the Pew Research Center, and roughly half of them are Puerto Rican. While Puerto Rican voters have historically tended to align themselves with Democrats, and Trump has angered many with his past actions, he and his allies have been waging an effort to win some over.

Among his efforts, Trump has announced endorsements from Puerto Rican artists in recent months. However, the rollout of those has drawn backlash.

Last month, Trump invited reggaeton singer Nicky Jam onstage during a campaign rally in Las Vegas. “Do you know Nicky?” he asked the crowd. “She’s hot!” Nicky Jam — a man — walked onstage to endorse him.

While Nicky Jam brushed off the former president’s mistake misgendering him in the moment, he later took down an Instagram post endorsing Trump after fans flooded it with angry comments. And Maná, a popular Mexican rock band, pulled its song with Nicky Jam from streaming platforms. “Maná does not work with racists,” the group said in a statement on Instagram. Maná will perform at a rally with Harris on Thursday in Las Vegas.

A couple weeks earlier, Trump announced the endorsements of Puerto Rican reggaeton stars Anuel AA and Justin Quiles during a rally in Pennsylvania, saying it would help him with the Puerto Rican vote.

“Do you know who they hell they are? Come up here, just fast, fast, fellas,” Trump said before thousands at the rally. “Come on ’cause I don’t know if these people know who the hell you are.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5619366&forum_id=2#48248244)

- potbelly

- doesnt exercise

- whines constantly

- women hate him

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5619366&forum_id=2#48248255)