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Puerto Ricans vented their anger after a comedian targeted them with racist jokes at a weekend rally for Donald Trump — and some warned the Republican former president could pay for it on Election Day.
On the same day that Democrat Kamala Harris unveiled plans to revitalize the US territory, Tony Hinchcliffe called it an “island of garbage” at a major Trump rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
Puerto Ricans living in the Big Apple, like 48-year-old Javier Diaz, said the insults would have “consequences for president Trump.”
“I’m going to vote for Harris,” Diaz, a paralegal living in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood, told AFP.
Denis Castro, a 60-year-old retiree living in the same area, said the comments made by Hinchcliffe and others at the rally qualified as “racism.”
“You can’t be talking like that,” Castro said, suggesting that many people would be deterred from voting for Trump over the incident.
Residents of Puerto Rico cannot vote in US elections, but the diaspora population living in the 50 states numbers almost six million, according to Pew Research Center, and is eligible to vote. It is the largest Hispanic community in the country after Mexicans.
As Trump’s rally unfolded on Sunday, Harris was in key battleground state Pennsylvania, visiting a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia and outlining plans to foster economic growth and create jobs on the island.
