By Ron Cheong
A Disgrace staged at Madison Square Garden
At what was supposed to be the climatic wrap-up of his 2024 campaign for the Presidency of the United States at Madison Square Garden, Trump and his cabal of invited speakers descended to a place of darkness not before seen at this level in public life. It was vulgar, hateful, offensive, vitriolic concoctions and lies; a descent into madness unbecoming of even—as Trump likes to put it, a “shithole nation,” much less the highly blessed United States of America.
It was the soul of a Trump Presidency on display
And this was the tone right from the outset at Madison Square Garden, getting louder and more deranged with every speaker. The vitriol, hate, and threats continued throughout the night, even though the campaign vetted each speaker’s presentation beforehand and displayed it on a teleprompter.
It is clear that this was the tenor of the message they wanted to deliver during the entire rally to hype up the MAGA base. There is no room for subterfuge in claiming a mistake or spinning this any other way here—there was no mistake.
The opening speaker spot went to right-wing podcaster and comedian Tony Hinchcliffe who set what was to follow for the rest of the night, delivering with a dour expression, “I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yeah, I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”
These remarks have to be condemned in the strongest terms. But an even greater condemnation not limited to the speaker is that this verbal racist assault against citizens of the United States of America was greeted with cheers, laughter, and applause by the assembled MAGA supporters.
In another humorless, crass insult he declared, “These Latinos, they love making babies too. Just know that. They do. They do. There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside, just like they did to our country.” His diatribe further included the dog whistle of eating cats and dogs, inferring that Black people love watermelons, and denigrating Palestinians.
And it went downhill from there. Tucker Carlson insulted both Harris’ racial background and her intelligence. In a crazed berserk delivery, he called Kamala Harris “the first Samoan-Malaysian, low-IQ former California prosecutor ever to be elected president.”
Other speakers added their voice with other misogynistic racial attacks including calling Harris the “Devil” and the “Anti-Christ.”
Trump for his part threatened. “the largest deportation program in American history.” He also claimed to be fighting “the enemy from within,” eliciting recollections of his stated wish to use the military against the American people.
It is not surprising that reports say that Madison Square Garden was deliberately selected to commemorate and reflect the Nazi rally at the same location in 1939, and to be the crowning cap-off of Trump’s 2024 campaign. Recall that Trump’s former Chief-of-Staff reported that Trump told him that he wanted “the kind of generals Hitler’s had,” and that “Hitler did some good things.”
Call to action
The response by Puerto Rican officials, artists, public, and clergy has been swift and angry. And they’re taking action. Entertainers Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez, Luis Fonsi, and Bad Bunny have endorsed Kamala Harris. Puerto Ricans who support Harris hope that this will swing more Puerto Ricans who live in the States to Harris. There are sizeable Puerto Rican populations in swing states like Pennsylvania.
Puerto Rico’s largest newspaper El Nuevo Dia also endorsed Harris following the Madison Square Garden mess. And in a terse open letter to Trump, Puerto Rico archbishop Roberto Gonzalez Nieves called for Trump to apologize personally.
But in a press conference from Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday evening Trump just seemed to dig in, using the occasion for more denunciation of immigrants, and for his continuing obsession with crowd size, bragging that he could have filled Madison Square Garden three times over. He described the event at the Garden as a love fest, “It was like a love fest, an absolute love fest, and it was my honor to be involved.”
In a separate interview with ABC News, he claimed he didn’t know Tony Hinchcliffe and didn’t hear his speech, “I don’t know him; someone put him up there. I don’t know who he is.” Which is par for the course for Trump, he doesn’t know about Project 2025 or that he had a white supremacist over for dinner either.
How much more proof do people need that Trump is unfit for the Presidency?
The election is less than a week away and the polls have it as a neck-and-neck race. Trump and his campaign will do everything to spin this latest example of his unfitness and minimize any loss in support. This could have tragic consequences if successful, in a race as tight as this.
But even if the race is not as tight as the polls say this is no time for letting down the guard. The stakes are too high. This is not one of those times to sit things out. Americans who cherish freedom, democracy, and opportunity only have one real choice in this election. America needs all right-thinking citizens, their families, and their friends onboard for this one.
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