Former Republican President Donald Trump's Madison Square Garden MAGA rally on Sunday drew a lot of mostly negative attention. Much of it was aimed at so-called MAGA comedian Tony Hinchcliffe's reliance on racism for laughs.
The set by the comedian—who refers to himself as "Kill Tony" on his social media—included jokes about Halloween with a Black friend involving carving watermelons instead of pumpkins, claiming Latinos love making babies with graphic comments, jokes targeting Jews and Black men, and referring to Puerto Rico as "garbage."
Hinchcliffe told the MAGA minions in attendance:
"There’s a lot going on. Like, 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."
Backlash has come from the left and even some on the right...
...while the Trump campaign is backpedaling on the jokes they vetted and loaded into the teleprompter.
One critic of the Trump campaign's decision to add a bigotry-filled comedy set in their MAGA rally is former friend of Trump, Geraldo Rivera.
The veteran television personality addressed his fellow Latino men, posting quotes of some of Hinchcliffe's jokes that targeted their community. Manhattan born Rivera's father, Cruz "Allen" Rivera, was born in Puerto Rico in 1915 when the island had already been a territory of the United States for 17 years.
Rivera wrote on X:
'A floating island of garbage…?' Referring to Puerto Rico??? 'Poisoning the blood of our nation…?' We have 'murder in our genes….?'"
F*ck these racists. Latino men of good will, have pride in yourselves and your ancestors. A vote for Trump is a vote against self-respect."
@GeraldoRivera/X
While there was appreciation for his words, some also called him out for previously supporting and enabling Trump.
Others expressed dismay over the tone and content of all of Trump's Madison Square Garden MAGA rally.
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While the blue checkmark MAGA minions—who seem to thrive in an Elon Musk controlled X—defended the racism and attacked Rivera for turning on their leader.
Rivera split with Trump over The Big Lie—a term even Trump used to refer to his campaign to undermine the election and overturn his loss to Democratic President Joe Biden. But Trump falsely claimed without any supporting evidence that Biden's win was the lie.
Their divide grew after the violent insurrection Trump incited to attack the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021—the day his loss would be certified by Congress.
The former Fox News contributor revealed in a recent interview with The Hill that he hadn't personally spoken to the former Republican President since a few days after Trump learned he lost both the popular and electoral vote in November 2020. In 2016, Trump only lost the popular vote.
Rivera recalled:
He was calling to get my take on the controversies surrounding the election, which appeared to have been decided by a handful of votes in several states. I asked him what he would do if the vote count remained against him."
As I reported on Fox News that same morning, Friday the 13th, he told me he was a reasonable man and would do the right thing if that time came."
According to Rivera, Trump instead chose to begin "an increasingly menacing campaign to discredit the 2020 election" which came to be known as The Big Lie.
The term The Big Lie originates from Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf where Hitler accused Viennese Jews of lying to undermine Germany's war efforts. In reality it would be Hitler and Joseph Goebbels Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda that would "tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it" until people would "eventually come to believe it."
It's a tactic also employed by the man whose first wife, Ivana, said kept copies of Hitler's speeches at their bedside to be read and studied. And a man whose father Fred Trump Sr. was infamously arrested at a Ku Klux Klan demonstration in 1927 and allegedly attended a 1939 American Nazi Party rally at Madison Square Garden as a member of the German American Bund.
Reports of the Trump family's Nazi sympathies have dogged them since before the United States entered WWII. During the war, Fred Trump Sr. denied having any German ancestry and publicized his support of Jewish causes.
However Fred Trump Jr. and his daughter Mary Trump both claimed the family patriarch and Donald Trump's mentor was virulently anti-semitic.
Rivera spoke to The Hill after joining other former Trump friends, allies, and administration members in endorsing Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris for President.
And in a move one might expect from a MAGA devotee like Hinchcliffe, Kill Tony took to X to cry victim and whinge about the criticism his racist jokes received.
Targeting comments made by New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Minnesota Democratic Governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, the comedian claimed his jokes were only racist because they were taken out of context.
Hinchcliffe posted as his Kill Tony pseudonym on X:
These people have no sense of humor. Wild that a vice presidential candidate would take time out of his 'busy schedule' to analyze a joke taken out of context to make it seem racist."
I love Puerto Rico and vacation there. I made fun of everyone…watch the whole set. I’m a comedian Tim…might be time to change your tampon."
This was a featured performer at a Republican presidential campaign event.
Way to keep it classy, GOP.
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@sadcommunistdog; @froglok/Bluesky