Tony Hinchcliffe May Be a Moron, But Don’t Buy the Meltdown
Trump is still primed to take more of the Latino vote than any Republican prior and some shitty jokes by a comedian are not going to be the Democrat’s salvation.
It’s the joke heard round the world. Or maybe heard round el mundo.
Tony Hinchcliffe, a comedian who recently rose to prominence on the back of his Kill Tony podcast, landed in some hot water following his jokes at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally yesterday.
“I don’t know if you know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” Hinchcliffe joked to groans from the audience. He later joked that Latinos have lots of babies because they don’t pull out during sex. “There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside. Just like they did to our country.”
The rage from the perpetually offended was as swift as it was predictable. Reacting to a clip of the jokes, New York Congresswoman AOC and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz both denounced Hinchcliffe saying “When you have some a-hole calling Puerto Rico ‘floating garbage,’ know that that's what they think about you. It's what they think about anyone who makes less money than them.”
Most tellingly, the duo added, “I want every Puerto Rican in Philadelphia and Reading and across the country to see this clip.”
It’s clear Democrats see Hinchcliffe’s comedy act as a rope they can try and tie around Trump’s neck; leeching away some of the support the former president has been gaining from Latino voters. In must-win Pennsylvania, where Biden won by a little more than 80k votes, the Harris/Walz campaign is likely hoping some of the state's large Puerto Rican population will be turned off enough by the jokes to deny Trump their votes.
There’s a few problems with that logic but let’s be honest before we dive into where Democrats are mistaken. To start, I think the jokes were pretty stupid. Were they as offensive as AOC and Tim Walz are trying to make them out to be? No, of course not. This is a desperation tactic as polls show the Harris campaign is quickly losing momentum.
But this is a week before the election and Trump’s team needs to avoid anything with even the potential to boost his opponent. It is monumentally stupid to hand Harris a soundbite that could remove a single sliver of support in the most important state this cycle. Trump and Vance have been playing these last few weeks incredibly well with appearances on several popular podcasts. It would be obscene to spike the football this late in the game.
On a positive note, Trump and Vance have played the response to Hinchcliffe’s jokes perfectly. While frothing-at-the-mouth Democrats and mediaites insist the pair should apologize, the campaign released a succinct statement saying they don’t endorse the positions espoused by Hinchcliffe and Trump and Vance have largely left it alone.
It’s the Trump/Vance ticket, not the Trump/Hinchcliffe ticket. The campaign can label him as a random comedian who made some stupid jokes. Apologizing admits culpability and extends the story past its maybe 48-hour shelf life.
Therefore, the outrage is more of a Hail Mary by Democrats than any serious issue facing the Trump campaign, and attempts to paint this as the thing that will deliver the Keystone State to Democrats, (as one blue operative put it to Politico “This was just like a gift from the gods”), are overblown.
Even Jon Stewart, not known for being a Trump fan, seemed to think this was all a little silly.
“Obviously, in retrospect, having a roast comedian come to a political rally a week before election day and roasting a key demographic – probably not the best decision by the campaign politically. But to be fair, the guy’s just really doing what he does," Stewart told “The Daily Show” audience. “There’s something wrong with me. I find that guy very funny. I’m sorry, I don’t know what to tell you.”
It was a joke. An off-color joke maybe, but a joke nonetheless. And I find it very difficult to believe given the other things Trump has said previously that this will be the thing that turns voters off him. When Trump infamously said in 2017 that Mexico “wasn’t sending its best,” Democrats assumed his chances at winning over Latinos were non-existent. Time has obviously shown that to be a catastrophic miscalculation as the party hemorrhages Hispanic voters to Trump. Is this really so much more offensive to Latinos than that?
Or God, is it that much more offensive than Democrats’ continued insistence on using terms like Latinx that Latinos have repeatedly said they don’t like?
Trump is still primed to take more of the Latino vote than any Republican prior and some shitty jokes by a comedian are not going to be the Democrat’s salvation. That the Harris campaign and its media allies are trying so desperately to blow the story up is an indication that they are really out of ideas.
If anyone is a joke here, it’s Kamala Harris and her offended little running mate.