Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said the controversy caused by a comedian calling Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage” at a recent Trump rally was not a “big deal.”
In a Monday interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, a Trump loyalist, Trump said he had “no idea” who the comedian was, and claimed he had “done more for Puerto Rico than any president, I think, that’s ever, that’s ever been president.”
“I have no idea who he is. Somebody said there was a comedian that joked about Puerto Rico or something and I have no idea who he is,” Trump said. “Never saw him, never heard of him and don’t want to hear of him.”
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“But I have no idea, they put a comedian in, which everybody does. You throw comedians in. You don’t vet them and go crazy. It’s nobody’s fault. But somebody said some bad things,” Trump said to Hannity.
He continued by claiming that the comedian had nothing to do with the campaign.
“Now what they’ve done is taken somebody that has nothing to do with the party, has nothing to do with us, said something and they try and make a big deal,” Trump said, not specifying who “they” referred to.
“But I don’t know who it is. I don’t even know who put them in and I can’t imagine it’s a big deal. I’ve done more for Puerto Rico than any president, I think, that’s ever, that’s ever been president.”
Newsweek has contacted the Trump campaign via email for comment.
The defense comes after days of Puerto Rican outrage across the country in response to comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who spoke at Trump’s Sunday rally in Madison Square Garden. His stand-up set included jokes about Black people and watermelons, Palestinians throwing rocks at Jews, and Puerto Rico being a “floating island of garbage.”
After the rally, a Trump campaign spokesperson said: “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign,” but The Bulwark reported anonymous campaign staff as saying the set was pre-vetted, loaded into a teleprompter, and a joke where Hinchliffe was going to call Kamala Harris a c*** was removed.
Some of the most famous Puerto Ricans, including Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez, and Ricky Martin, have publicly expressed their support for Kamala Harris in response to the joke to their tens of millions of followers on social media.
The comment also brought condemnation from Trump’s Republican allies from states with large Puerto Rican populations. The chairman of the Republican Party of Puerto Rico has called on the GOP nominee to publicly apologize for the comment and has said he will withhold his support for Trump until then.
