Trump Pays the Price for Insulting Puerto Rico

On Sunday, at a rally at Madison Square Garden, in New York, Donald Trump and his supporters gave their closing argument. It began with offensive, identity-based jokes straight from the ’80s; continued with a shout-out to a Black man involving watermelon; and at some point implied that Kamala Harris, the vice president of the United States, was a sex worker. Along the way were sprinklings of anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, and xenophobic comments, including this gem from the Trump adviser Stephen Miller: “America is for Americans and Americans only.”

The vitriolic event included some choice lines about Latinos from Tony Hinchcliffe, the comedian chosen by the Trump campaign to kick off the event. Hinchcliffe, who is also a podcaster, began with juvenile sex jokes about Latinos—“They love making babies”—before moving on to describe Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”

As a Nuyorican—what New Yorkers from the Puerto Rican diaspora affectionately call ourselves—I am keenly attuned to any mention of the island and my people. And for most of this campaign, little has been said. So it was a surprise to see that on the same day that Hinchcliffe spoke at Madison Square Garden, Vice President Harris released a video outlining her plan for Puerto Rico and visited a Puerto Rican restaurant on the campaign trail in Philadelphia.

The coincidence was fortuitous, because it offered Puerto Ricans a real-time split screen. Many saw Harris attempting to learn and address the concerns of Puerto Ricans; Trump showed that he was willing to welcome Latinos to his tent only if they were complicit with his racist worldview. The language used at the Trump rally “was so simple, and it just very genuinely showed how they really feel,” Paola Ramos, the author of Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America, told me.

After getting blowback for the “island of garbage” remark, the Trump campaign attempted to distance itself. (As everyone knows, Harris is responsible for everything anyone around her does, but Trump is innocent even of things for which he’s been found guilty.) “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump,” a campaign representative said.

As much as the campaign may try to disavow Hinchcliffe’s joke, it can’t avoid the way that that language merely reinforced the sense of disdain that Puerto Ricans had already experienced from Trump. The insult gave Democrats the perfect opportunity to remind Latino voters—and Puerto Ricans in particular—of something Harris raised in her video: Trump’s anemic, and insulting, response to islanders after Hurricane María, in 2017.

[From the November 2022 issue: Let Puerto Rico be free]

Hurricane Harvey had hit Texas a month earlier; there, FEMA had approved $142 million in individual assistance to hurricane victims within nine days. Nine days after María, FEMA had approved just $6.2 million for Puerto Ricans. In Texas, there were far more helicopters, meals, water, government personnel. When then-President Trump did finally visit the storm-ravaged island—nearly two weeks after the hurricane had passed—he told residents they were lucky they hadn’t endured “a real catastrophe, like Katrina,” and, in lieu of more meaningful assistance, threw rolls of paper towels to the crowd at a media event.

This year, Puerto Rican celebrities including Marc Anthony have already been working to remind voters of all of this while campaigning for Harris. After Sunday’s rally, Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez shared Harris’s video and announced that they were voting for her. Lopez will appear with Harris tomorrow.

But none of these endorsements have as much significance as that of the musician Bad Bunny’s. His fan base is enormous and young, and includes both men and women. And unlike many stars who avoid bringing politics to their platforms, San Benito, as he’s known to his fans, has made politics, and particularly the politics of colonialism, central to his art. He’s been active as Puerto Rico has approached its election for governor, also happening on November 5, purchasing billboards arguing that a vote for the ruling party is a vote for corruption. His take has weight.

For months, as megawatt celebrities such as Taylor Swift and Beyoncé have thrown their support behind Harris, I’ve heard people asking where Bad Bunny has been. Why hasn’t Bad Bunny been helping Harris? The answer seemed obvious to me: Despite being a U.S. citizen and a global superstar, Bad Bunny can’t vote in presidential elections.

Bad Bunny is a resident of Puerto Rico, and disenfranchisement is just one of the many inequities that define islanders’ second-class citizenship. But even if Puerto Rican residents can’t vote, they can influence the diaspora on the mainland, which can. And that’s what Bad Bunny is doing.

After Trump’s rally, Bad Bunny shared a segment of Harris’s Puerto Rico video to his 45.7 million Instagram followers several times. Specifically, he selected the segment in which Harris says, “There’s so much at stake in this election for Puerto Rican voters and for Puerto Rico,” and where she reminds people of Trump throwing paper towels to island residents after the hurricane.

Harris’s plan for Puerto Rico involves creating what she calls an “opportunity economy” on the island by shoring up the power grid, providing clean-energy credits to islanders, and developing affordable housing, job-creation incentives, and investment in Puerto Rican entrepreneurs and creators, among several other major initiatives. Her plan noticeably evades the big colonial issues, such as repealing the Jones Act—the 100-year-old tariff on produce and goods shipped to the island that costs residents an estimated $692 million a year. Nor does it address taking up the Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act—a bill that Representatives Nydia Velázquez and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have championed, which would allow islanders to vote on Puerto Rico’s status as a commonwealth. However, what Harris’s plan does offer are thoughtful solutions to many of the problems that have afflicted the island, especially in recent years, which is more than anyone can say of Trump.

The more that the “floating garbage” line is repeated—on television, on the radio—the more riled up Puerto Ricans are getting. More Puerto Ricans live on the mainland than on the island now. One result of the botched response to María has been, ironically, the migration of thousands of islanders—many to swing states such as Pennsylvania, where there are now nearly half a million Puerto Rican residents. Tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans currently reside in Georgia and Arizona as well. The Democratic strategist José Parra told The Hill that what happened at Madison Square Garden might make a real difference: “If Pennsylvania swings toward the Democrats, I think you can look back on this as a pivotal moment.”

Much has been made of the growing support for Trump among Latinos, and this offense is unlikely to sway any of his true believers. But it may motivate some Latinos who’d planned on sitting the election out. Victor Martinez, who owns a local Spanish-language radio channel in Pennsylvania, told Politico that a large portion of the community there had been on the fence about voting at all. The Trump rally shifted that. “If we weren’t engaged before, we’re all paying attention now,” he said.

Puerto Ricans love their island—even those who have never had the chance to go there. Yes, it has stunning beaches, lush green mountains, the sound of the coqui. But what we love most is the warmth of our culture: the music, the dance, the food, the art, our people. It is a place that calls to us when we’re far away and embraces us when we come home. The joke was not just an insult; it was a reminder of the neglect and disrespect the place and its people have faced for decades at the hands of the United States government, and especially during the Trump administration.

Once, when Bad Bunny was asked about his political engagement, he said, “I am not getting involved in politics; politics gets into my life because it affects my country, because it affects Puerto Rico.”