What to know about the backlash over Trump's Madison Square Garden rally

Donald Trump hosted a packed rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City on Sunday, one of his final campaign events before Election Day. Former first lady Melania Trump even made a rare campaign appearance to introduce her husband.

Trump’s speech was an amalgam of messages he’s been repeating over the last few months: Slamming his opponents as “the enemy from within,” calling the media “the enemy of the people” and suggesting Vice President Kamala Harris has a “low IQ.”

“When I say the enemy from within, the other side goes crazy,” Trump said. “They’ve done very bad things to this country. They are indeed the enemy from within. But this is who we’re fighting.”

But Trump’s comments at the rally were largely overshadowed by several of his opening acts, some of whom made outright racist statements that have since been condemned by multiple Republican members of Congress, among others.

Comedian makes racist jokes about Latinos, Puerto Rico

Tony Hinchcliffe, a comic and podcast host, was the first speaker at the New York City rally and delivered a routine that mocked Blacks, Latinos and Jews and called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean.”

Pennsylvania, one of the battleground states where polling shows there’s a tight race between Trump and Harris, has the third-largest Puerto Rican population in the county, after Florida and New York. Puerto Rico is also home to over 3 million American citizens, many of whom migrated to the U.S. after Hurricane Maria in 2017. (Puerto Ricans who live on the island are not eligible to vote in the presidential election despite being U.S. citizens.)

Hinchcliffe has mostly made a name for himself in the comedy world for his jokes on "Comedy Central Roast." He’s faced backlash for his jokes before, notably in 2021, when during a standup set he used a slur about fellow comedian Peng Dang. Hinchcliffe was subsequently dropped by his talent agency.

His podcast, "Kill Tony," gets over 2 million downloads per episode, the Wrap reported in March.

Who has responded to Hinchcliffe’s comments?

Hinchcliffe’s speech has prompted backlash from critics who heard his jokes as racist and antisemitic. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who watched the speech together while on a Twitch stream, slammed the set as “terrifying,” with Walz calling Hinchcliffe a “jackwad.”

“I need people to understand that when you have some a-hole calling Puerto Rico floating garbage, know that that’s what they think about you,” Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat whose family is from Puerto Rico, said. “That’s just what they think about you. It’s what they think about anyone who makes less money than them.”

Republicans like Sen. Rick Scott, Rep. María Elvira Salazar and Meghan McCain criticized Hinchcliffe’s set as well.

“This joke bombed for a reason,” Scott wrote on X. “It’s not funny and it’s not true. Puerto Ricans are amazing people and amazing Americans!” Salazar said she was “disgusted” and told Hinchcliffe to “educate yourself.”

“How is this winning over moderates and independents exactly?” McCain, who is the daughter of former Sen. John McCain, asked on Threads. “This is maga on steroids.”

Hinchcliffe’s comments about Latinos and Puerto Rico also spurred Bad Bunny, a Puerto Rican rapper who has achieved worldwide fame in the last few years, to share a Harris video on Instagram, where he has over 46 million followers. In a comment to the Washington Post, a source close to the singer confirmed that the post was an endorsement for Harris.

“I will never forget what Donald Trump did and what he did not do when Puerto Rico needed a caring and a competent leader,” Harris says in the video, referring to the former president’s response to Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island in 2017. “He abandoned the island, tried to block aid after back-to-back devastating hurricanes and offered nothing more than paper towels and insults.”

Other Puerto Rican artists like Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin shared the same Harris video on their Instagram accounts, expressing their support and endorsement of her. Bad Bunny, Lopez and Martin have a collective Instagram following of over 314 million fans.

In response to the backlash, Hinchcliffe has since tried to argue that his comments were “taken out of context” and critics like Walz and Ocasio-Cortez have “no sense of humor.”

The Trump campaign has also since tried to distance itself from Hinchcliffe. In response to his routine, Trump senior adviser Danielle Alvarez said in a statement, “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.” A Trump campaign insider who helped with the event reportedly told The Bulwark that Hinchcliffe had planned to include a joke calling Harris a "c**t," but campaign officials vetoed it.

In a conversation with ABC News on Oct. 29, Trump claimed he did not hear any of Hinchcliffe's comments. When asked what he thought of the comedian's jokes, Trump did not denounce them but repeated that he didn't hear what Hinchliffe said.

"I don't know him, someone put him up there. I don't know who he is," Trump told ABC News.

Who else spoke at the rally and what did they say?

While Hinchcliffe's words drew the most attention, several comments from other speakers attracted blowback, as well.

Tucker Carlson, making a joke about Harris’s Black and Indian heritage, said that she would be “the first Samoan-Malaysian-low-IQ-former-California-prosecutor ever to be elected president.” Trump’s childhood friend David Rem, who recently announced that he's running for mayor of New York, said that Harris is “the devil” and “the Antichrist.”

Lesser-known speakers, like conservative influencer and investor Grant Cardone, also attacked Harris, saying “her pimp handlers will destroy our country.”

“We need to slaughter these other people,” Cardone added, referring to Democrats. Radio host Sid Rosenberg also called the Democrats “lowlifes.”

A number of other pro-Trump celebrities also appeared onstage on Sunday.

Wrestler Hulk Hogan, who made an appearance at this year’s Republican National Convention, spoke after making his signature entrance to his “Real American” theme song. He addressed comparisons that some Democrats had been making in the days leading up to the event between the Trump rally and a large Nazi gathering that was held at Madison Square Garden in 1939.

“I don’t see no stinkin’ Nazis in here,” Hogan said in his speech. “I don’t see no stinkin’ domestic terrorists in here. The only thing I see in here are a bunch of hard-working men and women that are real Americans, brother.”

TV personality Dr. Phil McGraw came on stage to endorse Trump, adding that he didn’t necessarily “like or agree with everything” Trump has done or said but that “no human is perfect.”