Jennifer Lopez, Bad Bunny and Ricky Martin expressed support for vice president Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign on Sunday after a speaker at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally made racist jokes about Puerto Ricans and Latinos.
Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico “literally a floating island of garbage” while speaking ahead of Trump at the New York City rally. Elsewhere in his speech, Hinchcliffe said, “And these Latinos, they love making babies too. Just know that. They do. They do. There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside. Just like they did to our country.”
After the comments began spreading across social media, Puerto Rico-born Bad Bunny – who has more than 45 million Instagram followers – shared a campaign video of Harris making her pitch for Puerto Rican voters. Lopez, whose parents are Puerto Rican and who has 250 million followers, shared the same video alongside several other materials pitching Harris as the best candidate for Puerto Ricans. And Puerto Rican singer Ricky Martin shared the video to his 18.6 million Instagram followers as well as the original video of Hinchcliffe with the caption, “This is what they think of us.”
Earlier on Sunday, Harris’ running mate Walz and congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose family is Puerto Rican, said they were appalled in a video posted to social media. “The thing that is so messed up — that I wish more people understood — is that the things that they do in Puerto Rico are a testing ground for the policies and the horrors that they wish to and that they do unveil in working-class communities across the United States,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“And I need people to understand that when they when you have some a-hole calling Puerto Rico floating garbage, know that that’s what they think about you,” she added. “That is, like, that’s just what they think about you. It’s what they think about anyone who makes less money than them.”
AOC said she hopes “everyone in Philadelphia” sees the clip, which may be possible given the viral nature of the video on Sunday.
After the rally, the Trump campaign distanced itself from Hinchcliffe’s speech by saying the joke about Puerto Rico “does not reflect the views of President Trump and the campaign.”
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