FOR ANYONE WHO SUPPORT DIAPER DON AFTER THIS NATIONAL
EMBARRASSMENT, I'M TRULY SORRY FOR YOU!
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Perhaps it was appropriate. It was certainly on-brand. The culmination of Donald Trump’s campaign for president was a rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden, billed as his homecoming, the capstone of his political comeback.
But that’s not what happened in Manhattan last night. Instead, it was a vulgar hate-fest with possible political ramifications.
Before Trump took the stage, speaker after speaker filled the storied venue with hours of racist rants and hateful vitriol. If the intention was to inflame his MAGA extremist base, kudos to you, Donald, you did it.
I’ve long since stopped watching Trump rallies, but I was alerted yesterday with something to the effect of, “Turn on the TV, you’re not going to believe this.” During a campaign that had broken just about every taboo, I still couldn’t believe what I was seeing. This is Donald Trump’s America? It was an embarrassment for our country. And the low-brow warm-up acts were stealing headlines from the candidate.
To wit …
If you thought Trump and the campaign would try to avoid comparisons to the famed Nazi rally held in the Garden in 1939, you’d be wrong. Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller said, “America is for Americans and Americans only” which sounds an awful lot like Adolf Hitler’s exact words: “Germany is for Germans and Germans only.”
Speakers called Democrats “a bunch of degenerates, lowlifes and Jew-haters.” Harris was labeled “the Antichrist” and “the devil.” Another participant said Harris “and her pimp handlers will destroy our country.”
And then there was Tony Hinchcliffe, who calls himself a comedian. I doubt anyone else will after his performance.
He pointed to a Black man in the audience and made fun of his hairstyle and then made a “joke” about watermelons. He also went after Latinos, making a derogatory sex joke that was so awful it won’t be repeated here.
After denigrating Latinos for having children, he went on to disparage Puerto Rico, whose citizens are Americans — Americans who vote. “There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” he said.
The campaign, not the candidate who came on after, said the joke “does not reflect the views” of Donald Trump. Numerous Republicans, most of whom are running for election, also condemned the remarks.
As Hinchcliffe was quite literally trashing Puerto Ricans, Kamala Harris was reaching out to them. She was in Pennsylvania at the time of the Trump rally, courting the state’s sizable Puerto Rican community, rolling out a new plan to bring economic opportunities to the island.
I love an unintended consequence, and here is a whopper. Puerto Rican superstars Bad Bunny and Ricky Martin, along with Jennifer Lopez, whose parents are Puerto Rican, all endorsed Harris immediately following Hinchcliffe’s comments. They posted to their combined 314 million-plus followers on Instagram.
In addition to Bad Bunny, Martin, and JLo, some of the most popular names in music and politics are campaigning for Harris. In what has been a measured and disciplined campaign, each celebrity has had a role to play, and a demographic to convince.
The contrast between Trump’s rally and the Democratic efforts over the past week could not be more stark.
In Houston on Friday, Beyoncé headlined Harris’s biggest rally to date. The stadium erupted into prolonged cheers as the megastar, whose song “Freedom” was adopted as the Harris campaign’s anthem, came on stage. “I’m not here as a celebrity, I’m not here as a politician, I’m here as a mother,” she said. “A mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all of our children live in. A world where we have the freedom to control our bodies.”
Earlier in the week, Michelle Obama, a reluctant campaigner, was on the trail with Harris. She was direct and serious and persuasive. “Please, please do not hand our fates over to the likes of Trump, who knows nothing about us, who has shown deep contempt for us. Because a vote for him is a vote against us. Against our health. Against our worth.”
Rapper Eminem, at a rally in his hometown of Detroit, made a pitch for Harris. “People shouldn’t be afraid to express their opinions, and I don’t think anyone wants an America where people are worried about retribution or what people will do if you make your opinion known.”
Tonight, President Barack Obama will stump for Harris at a rally and concert in Philadelphia headlined by Bruce Springsteen and John Legend.
It is striking that these celebrities are braver than some of the most influential newspapers in the country. Last week, the billionaire owners of the Los Angeles Times (Patrick Soon-Shiong) and The Washington Post (Jeff Bezos) forced their papers to forgo their planned endorsements of Kamala Harris for president in favor of not endorsing anyone.
Though the Post’s banner still reads “Democracy dies in darkness,” it feels like the lights are dimming at the once esteemed newspaper. Thousands of people have canceled their subscriptions, and staff have quit in protest.
Looking for the silver lining, The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that “in a strange way the papers did perform a public service: showing American voters what life under a dictator would feel like.”
It is impossible to measure the effect that newspaper endorsements or celebrity appearances have on a race, especially one this close. But I’ll take Beyoncé, JLo, and Springsteen over Elon Musk, Hulk Hogan, and Tucker Carlson any day.
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Stay Steady,
Dan
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