It’s “too late” for Donald Trump to get Puerto Rican votes back after his Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday, according to Pennsylvania-based Latino radio host Victor Martinez.
Martinez made the comments during a CNN interview with Boris Sanchez on Tuesday, following remarks by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at Trump’s rally in Madison Square Garden on Sunday that sparked a firestorm of criticism and dominated news headlines.
At the rally, Hinchcliffe joked that Puerto Rico was a “floating island of garbage.” While Trump campaign adviser Danielle Alvarez clarified that Hinchcliffe’s controversial remarks “do not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign,” the joke was heavily denounced, with several GOP figures, including those in Florida—the state with the largest population of Puerto Ricans in the United States—condemning the remarks.
Meanwhile, the Kamala Harris campaign sought to make the most out of the remarks. On the same day as Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, the vice president was in Allentown in Pennsylvania—the battleground state with the most Puerto Ricans. Harris used her visit to release a video on her plan for Puerto Rico, which Puerto Rican music icon Bad Bunny shared on his Instagram account.
Alex Brandon/AP
Trump held a rally in Allentown on Tuesday. He didn’t discuss allegations of racism stemming from his Sunday rally, but did praise Latino and Puerto Rican voters.
“I have described this as a ‘Gift from the gods [for the Harris campaign],” Martinez said of Hinchcliffe’s remarks in a CNN interview on Tuesday.
“I mean, what are the chances that Kamala Harris is at a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia at the same time that this is happening in the Trump campaign rally in New York. This has definitely gotten to the Puerto Rican community in the entire state. I mean, we have about 500,000 Puerto Ricans here in the state of Pennsylvania. Allentown, where I’m at right now, where Trump is going to be tonight, is about 55 percent Latino – and about 45 percent are Puerto Rican.”
Martinez noted that other cities in the key battleground state also host significant Puerto Rican communities. He added that hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans live in other critical swing states, including approximately 100,000 in North Carolina, a highly contested state.
“This definitely is going to have an impact,” he said, adding that he thinks it is “too late” for Trump the win back Puerto Rican voters.
“One of the things that I heard the most this morning from my audience, and we broadcast our morning show through five radio stations in the state – so we have about 250,000 Latinos that listen to us in the state of Pennsylvania. I specifically asked the audience, ‘OK, what about if Trump today all of a sudden decides to apologize, all of a sudden decides to distance himself from the comedian? Would that be OK? Would you take that into consideration? Overwhelmingly, everybody was like, ‘No, too late; the train has left the station.’
“He could have done it Sunday night Monday or even this morning – and for him now to say ‘I don’t know the comedian; I didn’t even hear the joke’… I’m pretty sure by now he heard the joke and I’m pretty sure by now he could have personally said something to the Puerto Rican community.
“Donald Trump doesn’t himself acknowledge the fact that this was wrong, that this is unacceptable.”
He also stated that Puerto Ricans are a very proud people.
“Once you offend our island, our beautiful island in the Caribbean, you are messing with us,” he told CNN. “I’m telling you – if you know anything about Puerto Ricans – you don’t mess with our island or our flag. Those are sacred to us.”
Newsweek has contacted the Harris and Trump campaigns for comment.
Potential Impact
There are an estimated 5.8 million Puerto Ricans across the U.S. In Pennsylvania, they account for 3.7 percent of the population. While most Puerto Ricans vote Democrat, there is potential for the demographic to swing the election away from Trump if they vote for Harris in Pennsylvania, which has 19 Electoral College votes. In 2020, Biden narrowly won the state by 1.2 points
This demographic could also play a decisive role in states like Georgia and Arizona, where Biden’s victory margin was only 0.2 point and 0.3 point, respectively, and Puerto Ricans make up around 1 percent of each state’s population.
In Wisconsin, where Biden won by 0.6 points, Puerto Ricans make up about 1 percent of the population. Even in North Carolina, where Trump secured a win by 1.4 points, Puerto Ricans make up approximately 1.1 percent of the population.
Polls show tight races in these key states, with the candidates polling within 0.1 point to 1.9 points of each other, according to FiveThirtyEight, underscoring the potential of the Puerto Rican population to determine the outcome in these critical battlegrounds.
However, this does not necessarily mean Puerto Ricans will vote uniformly for Harris. Despite Trump’s controversial remarks about Mexicans in 2016, he actually improved his support among Latino voters in 2020. A similar trend was seen among Puerto Ricans; despite criticism over his handling of Hurricane Maria, Trump increased his share of votes in Puerto Rican-majority areas. In Osceola County, Florida, for instance, Trump received just 36 percent of the vote in 2016, but grew that to 42.6 percent in 2020.
Meanwhile, efforts are underway to mobilize Puerto Rican and Latino voters after Sunday’s rally, with Voto Latino, the leading civic engagement organization focused on informing and empowering a new generation of Latino voters, holding a national virtual call on Tuesday to rally the Latino community to go out and vote.
“Trump and the Republicans are reminding us of their animosity toward each and every Latino,” Voto Latino’s co-founder and president, María Teresa Kumar, said in a statement.
“One thing is for certain: Another four years of a Trump presidency puts our communities at risk of violence of the highest order. It is clear that Trump will not stop when it comes to targeting Latinos, and his enablers will cheer him on. We must all stand up and call today’s comments what they are: racist, degenerate and dangerous. It was a call to action to cause harm to us.”