Why That Trump Rally Puerto Rico Insult Is More Than Just A Bad Joke
This isn't 2016.
The outrage over Donald Trump’s Nazi rally revival at Madison Square Garden hasn’t vanished into the ether of another news cycle. This has confused many Democrats and pundits who assumed voters had become inured to Trump’s grossness. (A reasonable assumption when a major political party nominates a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist for president.)
Pollster Lakshya Jain posted on social media Monday, “I am just *amazed* that after all of this — after all of the chaos, the racism, the convictions, the insurrections, etc — the thing responsible for Trump's worst news cycle in a while is a racist comment made by a bad comedian at a Madison Square Garden rally.”
Of course, it doesn’t help that Trump refuses to apologize. He’s called the Madison Square Garden rally a “love fest,” which is another example of how this isn’t 2016. Hours after the Access Hollywood tape story broke, Trump apologized: “I never said I’m a perfect person, nor pretended to be someone that I’m not. I’ve said some things that I regret and the words released today on this more-than-a-decade-old video are one of them ... [it was] wrong and I apologize.” He’s incapable of even faking human remorse now.
at observed that Tony Hinchcliffe’s Puerto Rico remarks had generated “but her emails” coverage. “It’s kind of bizarre that it’s this?” he wrote. “Trump has personally said stuff every bit as awful. He was held libel for rape! The attacks on Haitians certainly got a lot of coverage, but not like this ... maybe because it’s so close to the election and has obvious horse race connotations? I just don’t know.”Trump and Vance tried to frame their grotesque attacks on Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, as a policy issue, and immigration always puts Democrats on the defensive. The Puerto Rico smear had nothing to do with policy, although Fox News’s Greg Gutfield claimed it was an obvious reference to Puerto Rico’s trash crisis. That only makes it worse, though, as there wasn’t even the pretense of caring about the actual problem or offering solutions. Puerto Rico is just an object of ridicule, a place where the struggles of U.S. citizens are ignored.
There were no disparaging jokes about the opioid crisis in rural America, which is considered a crisis because it mostly impacts white people. Richard Pryor, an actual comedian, said in 1983 when drug addiction spread to white communities, “They call it an epidemic, now. That means white folks are doin' it. You all used to drive through our neighborhoods and shit and go, ‘Oh, look at that. Isn't that terrible.’ Then, you get home and your 14-year-old be fucked up, you go, ‘Oh my god! It’s an epidemic!’ Maybe next time you see Black people trouble — you’ll help. Maybe. Right?”
Trump makes racist remarks all the time, so why did this particular one from a joke-less comic have such an impact? Well, it matters that it wasn’t Trump. Across the country, Trumpy candidates are bombing, just as they did in 2022: Kari Lake in Arizona and Mark Robinson in North Carolina are both set to lose their races by decisive margins, while Trump consistently outperforms them.
At a recent North Carolina rally, Trump supporters said they were excited to vote for him but were less enthused about Robinson.
When asked what would keep him from voting for Robinson, a Trump rally-goer said, “I didn’t like his attitude very much. He just seems like an angry man to me. He’s got a lot of anger there.”
I won’t belabor the obvious irony here.
Lake has struggled to match Trump’s performance in Arizona polls. It seems as if moderate voters are “unsettled by Ms Lake’s decision to deny the result of the 2020 governor race she lost to the Democrat Katie Hobbs,” but many of them are prepared to vote for Trump, who continues to deny the result of the 2020 presidential election he lost. He’s also been indicted for coup-related felonies, but Lake is apparently too “unsettling.”
Yes, Robinson is Black and Lake is a Vaseline-complexioned woman. However, the very white election denier Doug Mastriano suffered a landslide loss in the 2022 Pennsylvania governor’s race against Josh Shapiro. Blake Masters also lost the 2022 Arizona Senate race against incumbent Mark Kelly. It’s slightly reassuring that Trumpiness is non-transferrable, at least in battleground states.
‘I really like that guy’
Monday night on The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart defended Tony Hinchcliffe, who he said he finds “very funny.” Humor is subjective. I admit I still get a giggle when the Benny Hill theme plays, but Hinchcliffe pretty much objectively sucks. Good comedy is more than just schoolyard bullying masked as “edginess.”
“Obviously in retrospect having a roast comedian come to a political rally a week before Election Day and roasting a key voting demographic is probably not the best decision by the campaign politically,” Stewart said. “But to be fair, the guy’s really just doing what he does.”
Stewart’s example of Hinchcliffe “doing what he does” included clips from a Tom Brady roast where Hinchcliffe insulted Black people and Jews. I’m not sure that’s exculpatory.
It’s disingenuous to claim that Hinchcliffe was “roasting” Puerto Ricans, Jews, and Black people. That suggests they were the guests of honor at Trump’s Klan rally. Hinchliffe’s routine didn’t end with him embracing Sammy Davis Jr. and telling him how much he loved him. (That’s how you knew all the “only has one eye” jokes weren’t meant to hurt his feelings.)
Hinchliffe notably didn’t “roast” or even mildly singe Trump himself or JD Vance or Elon Musk. Those three could inspire several albums worth of comedy material. Instead, he “joked” that NFL player Travis Kelce was the next O.J. Simpson, pleasing the incels in the crowd who wish violence on Taylor Swift.
When workshopping the Puerto Rico joke at a New York City comedy club on Saturday, Hinchliffe acknowledged that it bombed but said it would do better at Trump’s rally the next day. That’s revealing. He knew his audience. And no, the same people who find drag queens deeply offensive aren’t simply more receptive to “edgy” humor.
Stewart added, “Bringing [Hinchliffe] to a rally and having him not do roast jokes, that’d be like bringing Beyoncé to a rally and having her …”
The dig here is that when Beyoncé appeared at a Harris rally in Houston last week, she gave an impassioned speech about reproductive freedom and women’s rights, but she didn’t perform Texas Hold ‘Em. This wasn’t a concert. It was a political rally, and Beyoncé understood the assignment.
During Stewart’s 2004 appearance on Crossfire, an annoyed Tucker Carlson told him, “I thought you were going to be funny. Come on, be funny.” Stewart snapped back, “No, I’m not going to be your monkey.” Hinchliffe probably would have made a Beyoncé/monkey joke. He already went with the trenchant observation that “Black people like watermelon.”
When Richard Pryor performed his street corner wino routine, he didn’t intend for the audience to mock someone less fortunate. He wanted us to empathize with him. Comedy, like most art forms, is a tremendous opportunity to foster empathy and compassion. You can make an audience a temporary family or a hateful mob. Hinchliffe picked the latter because he supports a candidate and a movement with no capacity for genuine humor. MAGA can only muster a chuckle while kicking someone who’s already down. I don’t find that “very funny,” even if Stewart does.
>> Richard Pryor, an actual comedian, said in 1983 when drug addiction spread to white communities, “They call it an epidemic, now. That means white folks are doin' it.” <<
Richard Pryor was a comic genius who had a knack for crystallizing racist attitudes into plain-spoken truths. His comedy came from deep, lived pain, and even throwaway lines like this one gave me a sharp jolt of awareness as I chuckled (uncomfortably) at the joke. He didn’t have to smugly punch down, because he was from “down.” He made me “woke” in the 70s and 80s, when I was in my 20s and 30s, and much of his output has stuck with me. That’s the timeless value of a real comedian’s work.
He was also a gifted actor. I still tear up just thinking about the Piano Man scene with Diana Ross in Lady Sings the Blues.
Thank you, Stephen. Excellent, as always.
'Hinchliffe notably didn’t “roast” or even mildly singe Trump himself or JD Vance or Elon Musk.'
Yup, Don Rickles would roast *everyone*, including himself. That's what an insult comic does, Jon Stewart.
Hinchliffe is that high school asshole on the bus who says horribly offensive things about decent people to get his buddies to snicker and sucks up to the bully leader of the group.