Donald Trump’s campaign thrived off hate – until now

It looked like an election devoid of an “October surprise” – the kind of last-minute turnaround that could shift the White House race from knife-edge to slam-dunk outcome. That surprise may now have come via a campaign-trail blooper now roiling the Donald Trump bandwagon which, on many indicators, was consolidating its chance of victory. But there is, it turns out, such a thing as overkill, even in this no-holds-barred election race.

A bare-knuckle Trump acclamation event at the Madison Square Garden in New York, home of boxing matches and wrestling tournaments, turned a hefty blow on the candidate himself. A warm-up act by the comedian and podcaster Tony Hinchcliffe mocked Latinos for alleged sexual irresponsibility, called Jews mean and Palestinians “rock-throwers”. But most damagingly, he dubbed Puerto Rico – a US territory – an “island of garbage”.



Besides the sheer unpleasantness , that jibe was an unforced error : Puerto Rican voters make up over 3 per cent of voters in Pennsylvania, the lynchpin north-eastern swing state , where a Trump win could well block a Kamala Harris victory or vice versa. Pennsylvania’s Latino eligible voter population has more than doubled since 2000 from 206,000 to 620,000 in 2023, according to US census bureau figures. The population in cities like Allentown and Reading is now more than half Hispanic, with a majority being of Puerto Rican descent and a sizeable portion of Dominican origin.

And while not all of them will be very bothered by the slur (Trump was doing well with Latino voters), the “joke” has landed badly and forced a usually impervious campaign to distance itself from the comments. It’s worth remembering however that the audience for these rallies is not the more moderate or traditional end of Republican America which has gritted its teeth and embraced Trump, or which simply finds liberals and the preachier aspects of the Democratic Party hard to bear. Read Next Who is really to blame for the pre-Budget chaos? The group Trump’s rallies are targeting at this point are the “hard to reach” voters who avoid contact with pollsters or canvassers and often don’t vote at all – but if they do, they will lean towards Trump.

So the tone and style of these is rambunctious and crude for a reason – when the campaign books the host of a “bro” podcast and adds the veteran wrestler Hulk Hogan’s shirt-ripping antics, the beer-and-circuses mood is deliberate, and part of the appeal is veering to extremes and touching the third rail. Racism – or its near cousin, crass stereotyping under the thin disguise guise of humour – have been a hallmark of this campaign. The fallout might indeed have thrown Harris a lifeline.

Latinos from various countries and backgrounds have been a target group for Conservatives and erratically disposed to Democrats. But a higher turnout for Harris driven by consternation or anger at Hinchcliffe’s remark, which has been magnified by Puerto Rican celebrities including Jennifer Lopez and “Despacito” singer Luis Fonsi, who can reach hundreds of millions via social media, was hardly the intention. Formally, the Trump campaign has distanced itself from Hinchcliffe, although Trump made no mention of the incident in his Mar-a-Lago speech this afternoon, hitting out instead at the “vicious lies” of his opponents.

We are, he told his Palm Beach audience, “the party of common sense and fairness”. At Madison Square Garden it was the “love in that room” which was breathtaking, “an absolute love fest”. He walked off to the camp classic “YMCA” from the Village People – a reminder that the Trump campaign is always, at its heart, a showbiz affair.

But that is the trapping, and the substance tells a different story. The New York rally was a parody of a love fest, with one speaker likening Harris to a prostitute with “pimp handlers”, another called her “the Antichrist” and the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson mocking her heritage (she has an Indian mother and Jamaican father) as “the first Samoan-Malaysian, low IQ former California prosecutor”. It’s a hate fest with shock jocks and a jaunty sound-track – but it’s still all about the hate.

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