Former President Donald Trump's rally in Madison Square Garden kicked off a firestorm of controversy after a right-wing comic introducing him called Puerto Rico "a floating island of garbage," with even hardcore MAGA Republicans immediately denouncing the joke as racist and inappropriate.
But behind the scenes, the turmoil is even worse, CNN's Kristen Holmes told Jake Tapper — even as on the surface of it, the Trump campaign considers the rally a rousing success.
"Yesterday afternoon on 'State of the Union,' a bunch of Republican people that I had on the panel, commentators, said they hope that Donald Trump will close in a positive, uplifting, embracing, inclusive message," said Tapper. "I don't think he's doing that?"
Holmes agreed, but added, "I can see why he wouldn't think that he needs to strike from that messaging," because every anti-immigrant, culture-war red meat line he threw at the rally "got a round of applause, not just tepid clapping, but a standing ovation ... they believe that what they are doing, and he believes himself what he is doing and saying, is working, and particularly when he is talking to his base at rally after rally, it was clear last night that they are enthused by that kind of rhetoric."
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When it comes to the Puerto Rico bit, however, she said, the GOP has its hair on fire.
"They do not need to be reminded how many Puerto Rican voters there are," said Holmes. "It's why you saw them issue that statement so quickly, and I was told personally that several lawmakers aides, allies, called up Trump's campaign, whether it be different advisers, essentially to say that this was a huge mess-up, that this was a huge problem. And I've heard a lot of finger-pointing among different aides and allies saying, how could this possibly have gone unvetted, who was supposed to look at these speeches?"
"Now, I was told that the speech was gone over by this comedian in particular, that none of the jokes that were actually put out there were things that had been vetted, he had not run these by the campaign," said Holmes.
But, she added, this is at odds with new reporting that the Trump campaign did intervene to cut another obscene joke he had planned to make about Vice President Kamala Harris.
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