Kathleen Culliton
October 29, 2024
Pedestrians walk by as people wait in line outside of Madison Square Garden to attend a rally for Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump in New York City, U.S., October 27, 2024. REUTERS/Leah Millis TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
Former President Donald Trump's description of his Madison Square Garden rally as a "love fest" stunned viewers who'd witnessed its racist jokes, misogynistic insults and the many comparisons made to another political event held in the event in 1939.
Trump spurred a new wave of outrage during his press conference at Mar-a-Lago Tuesday when he championed the love and beauty of an event that has the archbishop of San Juan demanding an apology.
"Yes," political commentator S.V. Dáte wrote on X. "That would be the one where speaker after speaker said racist, authoritarian things, including, most famously, that insult to Puerto Ricans and Latinos."
Dáte was referencing multiple jokes made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe who called Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage," made unpublishable sexual comments about Latinos, and mocked a Black attendee by suggesting he ate watermelon.
When Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign shared Trump's comment on X, her team accused him of bragging about speakers who "spewed racist bile."
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At the event, Tucker Carlson directed some of that commentary at Harris herself, scoffing at her heritage, which he misrepresented, and then suggesting it was absurd to think she could win an election.
“It’s gonna be pretty hard to look at us and say, ’You know what? Kamala Harris, she got 85 million votes because she’s just so impressive as the first Samoan-Malaysian, low-IQ, former California prosecutor ever to be elected president,” Carlson told the attendees.
Speaker David Rem called Harris the devil, Hulk Hogan made her the subject of an oral sex joke with crude physical gestures and Grant Cardone said she had "pimp handlers."
Independent journalist Marisa Kabas on Tuesday noted Trump, in describing this event, quietly threw himself a compliment by implying he drew more people than an infamous gathering of the American Nazi Party.
"They started to say 'Well, in 1939 the Nazis used Madison Square Garden," Trump said. "They've used Madison Square Garden many times, many people have used it, but nobody's ever had a crowd like that, and I'll tell you what right now, nobody's ever had love like that."
Trump's characterization of such comments as loving spurred CNN anchor Jim Acosta to issue a succinct verification verdict.
"One week before Election Day, Trump defends MSG rally from Sunday night as a 'love fest,'" Acosta wrote. "Fact check: It was not."
Conservative anti-Trump political group the Lincoln Project responded to Trump's comment by noting the things he had not said.
"No explanation, no apology," they wrote. "He's trash, throw him away in the dustbin of history in 7 days."
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