Former President Donald J. Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday opened with a standup comic who called Puerto Rico an “island of garbage” in a set that also included derogatory remarks about Latinos generally, African Americans, Palestinians and Jews.
It was a startling program for a campaign that has been trying to cut into Democrats’ support among Hispanic, Black, Jewish and Arab American voters in an effort to win in several key battleground states.
The comic, Tony Hinchcliffe, was the warm-up act ahead of several other speakers whose remarks were laced with vulgar insults, profanity and racist comments.
The crowd inside Madison Square Garden was predominantly white, with a significant number of Latinos. Many groaned at Mr. Hinchcliffe’s insult to Puerto Rico. Still, he told a tasteless, vulgar joke about the size of Hispanic families, mentioned watermelons as he called out a Black man in the audience and mocked Palestinians as rock-throwers and Jews as cheapskates.
At roughly the same time on Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris was in Philadelphia courting Pennsylvania’s sizable Puerto Rican population with a stop at a local Puerto Rican restaurant, Freddy & Tony’s.
But in New York, Mr. Trump’s rally featured a series of speakers whose remarks were far outside of longstanding political boundaries.
One, Sid Rosenberg, a conservative radio host, referred to Hillary Clinton with profanity and a sexist epithet. And Grant Cardone, a businessman who spoke early in the program, referred to Ms. Harris as if she were a prostitute. Later in the program, Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, mocked Ms. Harris’s racial identity and intelligence as he jeered the idea that she could win in November.
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