Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville cautioned that comedian Tony Hinchcliffe‘s jokes about Puerto Rico at former President Trump’s rally in Madison Square Garden is going to cost the GOP nominee votes in key battleground states.
“Trump is a giant loser,” Carville said Monday night in an interview on MSNBC’s “The Beat.”
“The sooner people acknowledge that and know that it’s true, they stop fearing him,” he told host Ari Melber. “The stuff last night was so over-the-top, it’s unbelievable.”
His comments were in response to Hinchcliffe’s comparison of Puerto Rico to “a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean.” The Trump campaign, amid GOP frustration over the jokes, has since sought to distance the former president from the remarks.
Carville, once a senior adviser to former President Clinton, predicted that the jokes would cause Trump to lose some votes in swing states with large Puerto Rican populations.
“This is gonna cost him votes,” he said, adding, “This is a community that is not going to take well to this. I promise you.”
Following the high-profile rally, Politico reported that many Puerto Rican voters in the swing state of Pennsylvania — which accounts for almost half a million people in the state — are “furious” about the remarks.
Hinchcliffe, who goes by Kill Tony, faced significant backlash and responded to a clip from Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who criticized his material.
“These people have no sense of humor,” Hinchcliffe wrote in response. “Wild that a vice presidential candidate would take time out of his ‘busy schedule’ to analyze a joke taken out of context to make it seem racist.”
In light of the news, Puerto Rican voters have shot to center stage in national elections with just one week left until Election Day, marking a major shift for an electorate that was largely overlooked for a century.
The Hill has contacted the Trump campaign for comment.
