Puerto Rican leaders in Philadelphia slam Trump campaign for racist remarks: ‘It woke us up’
City Councilmember Quetcy Lozada urged Puerto Ricans to not accept an apology from the Trump campaign over comedian Tony Hinchcliffe's racist remarks at a Trump rally, instead urging them to vote.
After a comedian levied racist comments against Puerto Ricans to pump up the crowd at a Sunday rally for former President Donal Trump, Philadelphia City Councilmember Quetcy Lozada said she and her friends were so angry they couldn’t sleep.
The remarks, made by Tony Hinchcliffe at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, had reverberated through Philadelphia’s Latino community, leading to a news conference in Fairhill where elected officials and faith leaders urged the city’s Puerto Rican residents to do anything but sit and stew on Election Day.
“Our frustration and our anger should be turning into voting,” said Reading Mayor Eddie Morán — who is Puerto Rican — while flanked by Lozada, Pennsylvania state Rep. Danilo Burgos, and representatives from several community organizations.
Organized by Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, the convening took aim at jokes Hinchcliffe made about Puerto Rico — and Latinos more broadly — before Trump took the stage Sunday.
”I don’t know if you know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” Hinchcliffe said to a tepid audience response.
In an election where both campaigns have poured million of dollars into winning Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes, the state’s growing Puerto Rican population has created a large voting bloc that Trump and Harris have attempted to court with varying degrees of success.
Philadelphia has one of the largest Puerto Rican populations in the country, second to only New York City. Close to 137,000 Puerto Ricans live in Philadelphia, comprising nearly 29% of Pennsylvania’s 473,000 Puerto Rican residents, according to the Census Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey. Puerto Rican residents also make up large swaths of other cities in the commonwealth, such as Allentown (eighth highest population) and Reading (12th highest).
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“Basically, he said goodbye to Pennsylvania,” U.S Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D., N.Y.) said while making an appearance in the Spanish Harlem section of Manhattan.
The insulting comments have become sort of a rallying cry for the Harris campaign and its surrogates, who are capitalizing on the moment to urge Puerto Rican voters to head to the polls out of rage if nothing else.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro condemned the comments during an interview on the Wilkes-Barre radio station WILK Newsradio, saying Hinchcliffe’s joke fit a pattern of “Trump and his allies trying to create ‘others’ in our society, put certain people down, [and] separate certain people out because of … what they look like or where they come from.”
Pennsylvania’s Puerto Rican residents “deserve a president who respects them,” Shapiro said.
“I need every Boricua on here to take that rally clip and drop it in your family WhatsApps and group chats. ESPECIALLY if you have family in these states,” U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) posted on X, referring to people of Puerto Rican descent, above a list of Puerto Rican populations in swing states including Pennsylvania.
Puerto Rican superstar entertainners Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez, and Ricky Martin also posted videos of Harris discussing her plan for the island to their Instagram stories within hours of Hinchcliffe’s comments.
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The Trump campaign told reporters that Hinchcliffe’s “joke does not reflect the views of President Trump.”
The comedian has stood by his remarks. “I love Puerto Rico and vacation there. I made fun of everyone … watch the whole set,” Hinchcliffe wrote on X.
That defense fell flat with Latino community leaders in Philadelphia on Monday, who said they would “absolutely not” accept an apology from the Trump campaign over Hinchcliffe’s remarks.
As surrogates “all of these statements that we say up here are vetted by the campaign,” said Lozada, who represents Latino communities in Hunting Park, Fairhill, and Kensington as part of City Council’s Seventh district. “Don’t be fooled. That is something that they are aligned with. The [Trump] campaign believes that we are garbage.”
Lozada went on to draw a sharp contrast between Harris — who visited Puerto Rican institution Freddy & Tony’s restaurant in North Philly on Sunday — with what she referred to as “Trump’s record.” She cited comments the former president made about wanting to exchange Puerto Rico for Greenland and a 2017 photo op where Trump tossed paper towels at residents of the island after Hurricane Maria.
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”This is Trump’s closing message,” Lozada said, “attacking our community for his own political benefit.”
‘It woke us up’
Monday’s news conference was also about reaffirming that the political can be personal to create solidarity among the city’s Puerto Rican diaspora, those back home on the island, and other Latino communities.
Pennsylvania’s Puerto Rican population has grown from 44,500 to 486,100 since 1970, with one of the largest shifts occurring in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017, when Puerto Ricans moved to Philadelphia and other cities. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, but those living on the island are not eligible to vote in presidential elections because there is not Electoral College representation of members of Congress. After establishing permanent residency in a state, however, Puerto Ricans are able to vote in federal elections.
That’s part of why Hinchcliffe’s comments felt so disheartening, said Morán, who recalled for reporters what it was like to watch his mother, siblings, and extended family “suffer” long-term blackouts and food shortages on the island as Trump as president withheld $20 billion in disaster relief after Hurricane Maria.
“I got calls, texts, messages, emails from Puerto Ricans and Latinos all over the country showing the same level of frustration” on Sunday night, Morán said.
Former City Councilmember Maria Quiñones Sánchez told The Inquirer that Hinchcliffe’s jokes made it feel like the Trump campaign “literally slapped us down” on what otherwise should have been celebratory night. Quiñones Sánchez spent Sunday at Freddy & Tony’s with Harris, commending the vice president for releasing an economic opportunity plan for Puerto Rico, something advocates have asked for because, they say, tax breaks for the wealthy drive income inequality.
Monday morning, she cried while walking her dog and listening to Bad Bunny’s “Una Velita,” a song about systemic disinvestment in Puerto Rico. “It was almost like that song was about yesterday,” Quiñones Sánchez said.
Other speakers found parallels between Hinchcliffe’s remarks and how Trump and his allies routinely disparage Latino and Caribbean communities. Trump’s vice presidential nominee JD Vance spread xenophobic rumors that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, and Charleroi, Pa., drive up crime and cause financial ruin. In September, Trump pushed a narrative, rebuked by the Republican mayor there, that Aurora, Colo., was overrun by Venezuelan gangs.
“It’s not just about Puerto Ricans. ... Trump has no shame when it comes to demonizing Latino communities,” Morán said.
Still, the Reading mayor sees a silver lining in Hinchcliffe’s remark.
“It did us a favor,” Morán said. “It woke us up.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the amount of hurricane relief slated for Puerto Rico in 2017.