By Marietha Góngora V.
(OSV News) — The archbishop of San Juan de Puerto Rico, Archbishop Roberto O. González Nieves, has written an open letter to former President Donald Trump, demanding the Republican presidential nominee personally apologize for racist remarks directed at Puerto Rico and others, that took place at his Oct. 27 rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
With days before Election Day Nov. 5, stand-up comic Tony Hinchcliffe was the opening warm-up speaker for Trump’s massive rally. Hinchcliffe, whose brand is insult-comedy, launched into a set of racist jokes toward Latinos and Puerto Ricans, groups known to be majority Catholic.
“These Latinos, they love making babies, too. Just know that they do,” Hinchcliffe said, before getting to the punchline laden with crude sexual innuendo. “There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside, just like they did to our country.”
Hinchcliffe, host of the “Kill Tony” podcast, turned to Puerto Rico.
“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 told the audience.
After that, Hinchcliffe then turned to another group where Latinos are heavily represented: immigrants to the U.S.
“Believe it or not, I welcome immigrants to the United States of America with open arms, and by open arms, I mean like this,” said Hinchcliffe, gesturing with his arms in rejection and murmuring, “Go back.”
Hinchcliffe proceeded to make other racist jokes toward Black Americans, Palestinians, Jews, and others.
In his open letter Oct. 29, Archbishop González told Trump he felt “dismayed and appalled” by the comedian’s remarks.
“Puerto Rico is not a floating island of garbage. Puerto Rico is a beautiful country inhabited by a beautiful and noble people, which is why in Spanish it is called ‘un encanto, un edén.'”
The San Juan archbishop, who had served in parishes in New York’s Bronx borough from 1977 to 1988, told the Republican presidential candidate that “more Puerto Rican soldiers died in the Vietnam War as part of the United States military than soldiers from any state in the United States.”
In the letter, the archbishop said — on behalf of the bishops of Puerto Rico — that while he enjoys a good joke, humor also has moral limits.
“It should not insult or denigrate the dignity and sacredness of persons. Hinchcliffe’s comments not only provoke sinister laughter but hatred,” he said. “Such comments have no place in a society founded on ‘liberty and justice for all.'”
Archbishop González said such comments “do not promote a climate of equality, fraternity, and goodwill among and for all women and men of every race, color, and way of life which is the foundation of the American dream. These kinds of remarks should not be part of the political discourse of a civilized society.”
At the end of his message, Archbishop González called on the former president “to disavow these comments as reflecting in any way your personal or political views.”
But the Puerto Rican archbishop made clear that Trump himself had to do it.
“It is not sufficient for your campaign to apologize. It is important that you, personally, apologize for these comments,” Archbishop González concluded.
Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, and represent a key Latino voting block in U.S. states where they reside, particularly in swing-state Pennsylvania where more than half a million Puerto Ricans are registered voters. By state, Pennsylvania has the fourth largest population of Puerto Rican residents (8%), after Florida (21%), New York (17%) and New Jersey (8%), according to Pew Research Center.
Media outlets such as Univision reported that Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign condemned “the joke, calling it ‘disgusting’ and ‘racist.'” Harris had just unveiled a policy in Philadelphia, the same day as Trump’s rally, that focused on helping build an “opportunity economy” in Puerto Rico. Shortly after the controversial Trump rally, Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny, who is known to be largely apolitical, threw his support to Harris and began promoting her video appeals to millions of his social media followers.
A number of Republicans have condemned the remarks on X, formerly Twitter, such as Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who said, “Puerto Ricans are amazing people and amazing Americans,” and Florida Rep. María Elvira Salazar who said she was “disgusted” and added, “This rhetoric does not reflect GOP values.”
Trump’s campaign team has attempted to distance its candidate from the remarks about Puerto Rico, claiming the comedian does not represent the former president’s views. Trump has not addressed the controversy.
Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance — who pushed baseless claims in September that Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio — dismissed the incident Oct. 28, telling reporters in Wisconsin, “I think that we have to stop getting so offended at every little thing in the United States of America. I’m just — I’m so over it.”
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said on X that Puerto Rico “isn’t garbage,” while emphasizing “those weren’t Trump’s words” and also the nature of the comedy routine.
He said, “They were jokes by an insult comic who offends virtually everyone, all the time….. because that is what insult comedians do.”
But for Elisabeth Román, a native of Puerto Rico and president of the National Catholic Council for Hispanic Ministry, what Hinchcliffe said “is not a joke, it is racism.”
“That comedian crossed the line,” Román told OSV News.
“I am extremely upset, but honestly, also, although it was not the presidential candidate who said it, he did not come out to condemn it either,” Román said, adding, “That comedian not only insulted Puerto Ricans, he insulted Latinos, migrants.”
“The thing that hurt me the most was that they laughed. We have been for months, maybe more years, in this political campaign denigrating the migrant, the one who is not from the dominant culture. You see how they talk about migrants, like the mere fact that we have to leave our country criminalizes us,” Román said.
Román said she found it unacceptable that something like this happens in New York, where the Puerto Rican community has historically been one of the largest among the immigrant population. “In Madison Square Garden, in a city with a huge Puerto Rican population,” she added.
Father José M. Santiago, a Dominican friar in the order’s Chicago-based Province of St. Albert the Great, who also serves as the chaplain and associate director of SPRED (Special Religious Development) in the Archdiocese of Chicago, told OSV News that “hearing those words was like seeing Trump throwing towels to the people when he went to visit Puerto Rico. It was a sense of disrespect to what the people needed at that moment.”
The Puerto Rican priest was referencing an incident where Trump visited Puerto Rico in October 2017 in the catastrophic aftermath of Hurricane Maria, and tossed paper towels into the hands of a crowd in San Juan.
For Puerto Rico, the incident is further colored by the fact that Trump disputed the island’s official death toll of nearly 3,000 people, threatened to veto $5 billion in emergency relief when the island was struck by earthquake in 2020, and stymied the disbursement of $20 billion in hurricane-recovery aid appropriated by Congress.
Father José echoed Archbishop González’s conclusion that what happened at the rally crossed the bounds of civilized discourse, regardless of whether such behavior involved Republicans or Democrats.
“It is not in any sense Christian or acceptable,” he said.