Former President Donald Trump returned to a predominantly Hispanic town in eastern Pennsylvania on Tuesday evening after a comedian who appeared at Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden over the weekend sparked controversy by making racist jokes about Latinos. Puerto Rico “floating garbage island”.

Trump’s rally took place in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a city of more than 125,000 people where Hispanics make up 55% of the total population, according to U.S. Census data, with a large portion of that number being Puerto Ricans.

Among the previously scheduled speakers at the Allentown rally was Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, whom Trump recruited to woo Latino voters across the country.

Initially, Trump made no mention of the debate, but referred to the Madison Square Garden rally, calling it “the greatest evening politically anyone has ever seen” and adding that “the love was incredible.”

The day’s second campaign stop in Pennsylvania — following a roundtable in Drexel Hill, where the population is overwhelmingly white — the visit to Allentown was an opportunity for the former president to court Hispanics and, more specifically, Puerto Ricans, after Hispanic groups in both. Those across the aisle called racist jokes made at the New York rally “derogatory,” “offensive” and “disrespectful.”

The comments were made by controversial comedian Tony Hinchcliffe during a pre-show earlier on Sunday afternoon; these included explicit comments about how much Latinos “love making babies.”

“I don’t know if you know this, but there’s a garbage island floating in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” Hinchcliffe told the crowd of about 20,000 on stage Sunday night. After the former president himself called the other day United States “a dustbin for the world”.

Instead of apologizing for his comments, Hinchcliffe attacked his critics for their lack of humour, accusing them of taking the joke out of context and “making it sound racist”.

The former president denied knowing the comedian on Tuesday, telling ABC News Senior Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott: “I don’t know him, someone put him there. I don’t know who he is.”

Trump also insisted that he had not heard any of the comments, even though they had been televised and written about extensively. When asked what he thought of them, he did not take the opportunity to condemn them and repeated that he had not heard the comments.

Trump’s campaign also tried to distance itself from comedian Hinchcliffe, saying his comments did not reflect his views.

Numerous Republicans spoke out against the jokes, including Angel Cintrón, chairman of the Puerto Rican Republican Party, who called Hinchcliffe’s comments “unfortunate, ignorant, and completely reprehensible” as well as “racist.”

Residents of Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, do not vote for president in general elections, but the Puerto Rican Republican Party held a primary in April as part of the Republican presidential nomination process. Donald Trump won the primary and netted the district’s delegates.

But Puerto Ricans living in the United States make up the largest Hispanic group in seven states across the country, including the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania, according to U.S. Census data.

In Pennsylvania, which President Joe Biden won by just over 81,000 votes in 2020, 3.7% of the state’s total population, or about 486,000 people, were of Puerto Rican descent. According to the October 29 poll average of 538, Pennsylvania is again expected to witness an extremely tight race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump is ahead of Harris by just 0.2%.

Overall, Pennsylvania’s Latino voter population has more than doubled since 2000, from 206,000 to 620,000 in 2023. Analysis of WNTM US Census Bureau figures.