Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump reiterated his tough stance on immigration policy in an hour-long appearance at his Florida country club on Tuesday, while Democrats highlighted the racist rhetoric his campaign and allies have used to describe Latinos in the final week of the presidential campaign.
In his speech at Mar-a-Lago, the former president made passing references to the criticism his rally at Madison Square Garden received on Sunday – included Comparisons to a rally of American Nazis in the same building in 1939 — but did not directly address the uproar caused by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s jokes about Puerto Rican and Latino immigrants.
Trump sought to change the narrative that followed the New York rally by calling the atmosphere “an absolute lovefest.”
“I don’t think anyone has ever seen anything like what happened at Madison Square Garden the other night, the love, the love, the love in that room. It was breathtaking,” he said.
“You know, they started saying, ‘Well, in 1939 the Nazis used Madison Square Garden.’ …What a terrible statement, right? Because, you know, they’ve used Madison Square Garden many times. A lot of people have used it, but no one has ever had a crowd like this.”
The former president continued to promote his hardline position on immigration, which was the focus of his campaign, and used racist language to describe the issue.
“I know we talk about inflation and the economy, but to me there is nothing, nothing more important than destroying the fabric of our country by forcefully housing people there,” he said. “I think what’s happening at the border is the biggest problem, and I see it more and more when I speak.”
Trump repeated the debunked claim that Aurora, Colorado, had been overrun by Venezuelan gangs, claiming without evidence that “at least” 325,000 migrant children were brought into the country as “slaves or sex slaves.”
Trump did not answer questions at the event, which was planned as a press conference.
Harris and DNC keep Puerto Rico in the spotlight
Democrats, including the party’s presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, sought to compare the language Trump and his allies have used about Latinos with that of Harris.
“Donald Trump spends all his time trying to get Americans to point fingers at each other, stoking hatred and division,” Harris told reporters on Monday about Trump’s rally in New York. “And that’s why people are exhausted by him.”
A press release from the Democratic National Committee on Tuesday said Harris was campaigning at a Puerto Rican restaurant in Pennsylvania on Sunday evening, almost at the same time that Hinchcliffe described the area as a “floating island of trash.” Hinchcliffe also made an offensive joke about Latino immigrants.
Trump also promised “a new golden” age of closed borders at the event.
“Donald Trump’s MAGA Republican Party is driven by hate and extremism – and that is exactly what the Trump campaign wanted to send to voters as the closing message of this campaign,” said Monica Guardiola, co-executive director of the DNC.
“These hateful and racist attacks reveal a deeper truth about Trump’s Project 2025 agenda: He will roll back our rights, rip children from their mothers’ arms, stop investing in our communities, and close our small businesses so he can fill time . “Pockets of his billionaire supporters.”
The statement also said the party would run billboard advertisements near Puerto Rican communities in Pennsylvania with a Washington Post headline quoting Hinchcliffe.
“Trump rally speakers utter racial slurs and call Puerto Rico ‘Island of Trash,'” the billboards said, the press release said.
Pennsylvania, perhaps the most critical of the seven swing states in next week’s election, is home to about 8% of the 5.6 million Puerto Ricans living in the United States, the fourth-highest concentration of any state.
The DNC billboards will be placed on highways near Allentown, Reading and Philadelphia, where there are immense Puerto Rican populations, the DNC said.
Trump was scheduled to make a campaign stop in Allentown on Tuesday afternoon.
Trump is trying to turn things around
On Tuesday morning at Mar-a-Lago, Trump sought to portray Harris and the Democrats as anti-American agents, a continuation of a theme he has emphasized in the final weeks of the campaign, that his political opponents are “the enemy within.”
Commentators and extremism experts have warned that the language tends towards fascism.
When Trump called his own campaign event an event of love despite the aggressive anti-immigrant stance, he said Harris was “running a campaign of hate.”
“Really, perhaps more than anything else, it is a campaign of hate, a campaign of absolute hate,” he said. “I said yesterday that she was a ship. She is a vessel. It’s a very large, powerful party with smart people – they must be smart, but it’s evil. They are evil and may even try to destroy our country.”
