Vice President Kamala Harris received a major endorsement on Sunday evening when Latin music sensation Bad Bunny reposted her video about Puerto Rico on his Instagram Story.
Bad Bunny – the stage name for Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio – posted a segment of Harris’ video that discussed Puerto Rico’s stake in the election. The hitmaker has over 45 million followers on the social media platform and has sold millions of albums.
“I will never forget what Donald Trump did and what he did not do when Puerto Rico needed a caring and competent leader,” Harris said in the video.
The Trump administration impeded a federal probe examining the delayed release of $20 billion in Hurricane Maria aid to Puerto Rico, according to an April 2021 oversight report.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Inspector General found that officials created unusual bureaucratic obstacles between HUD and the Office of Management and Budget, significantly slowing the distribution of Congress-approved disaster relief. The funds were meant to help Puerto Rico recover from Hurricane Maria in 2017, one of America’s deadliest natural disasters in a century.
The superstar singer then reposted the video, two more times, zooming in closer and closer to Harris’ face and repeating shorter segments until the last video, which simply says, “I will not forget what Donald Trump did.”
The video, posted sometime between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. ET, followed the speech by controversial comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who spun a “comedic” take on immigration at the rally before saying, “There is literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico?”
Hinchcliffe’s joke prompted murmurs and silence from the crowd, as well as significant backlash on social media.
Rep. Richie Torres, D-N.Y., responded to the comedian’s offensive remarks on X, writing, “Tony Hinchcliffe, who is one of the speakers at Donald Trump’s rally at MSG, felt the need to hurl a racist insult at the people of Puerto Rico.”
He added: “As a Puerto Rican, I am tempted to call Hinchcliffe racist garbage but doing so would be an insult to garbage. When casting their ballots at the voting booth, Latinos should never forget the racism that Donald Trump seems all too willing to platform.”
Bad Bunny’s announcement comes at a time when both Harris and Trump are fighting for every vote in a tight contest where neither candidate has a clear advantage, and both candidates have fought bitterly for the Hispanic vote.
Polling has seen the Hispanic vote swing between the two candidates over the final months, with one poll from ABC News/Ipsos in September finding Harris only pulling a 17-point advantage compared to President Joe Biden‘s 30-point advantage in the 2020 election, and a new poll on Sunday indicating she had been able to grow that lead to a 30-point advantage going into the final week before the election.
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