Donald Trump is predicted to pour rhetorical gasoline on the fire he set in New York City Sunday when a comedian told a racist joke and spurred outraged demands that the former president apologize.
Democratic Party strategist Julie Roginsky made this prediction on CNN Tuesday, hours before Trump was scheduled to host an Allentown, Pennslyvania, rally — a battleground region whose residents are watching the former president closely before next week's vote, she said.
"That is the swingiest county in the swingiest state in the nation," said Roginsky. "It's going to be a slap in the face unless he does anything short of saying this was inappropriate."
Trump faces mounting calls to apologize personally for Tony Hinchcliffe's opening act at Madison Square Garden Sunday during which the comedian called Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage" and made crude jokes about immigration.
Roginsky argued Tuesday that voters in Pennsylvania's Lehigh and Northampton counties were likely unimpressed with the Trump campaign's efforts to distance themselves from the jokes, as Sen. J.D. Vance did when he claimed he hadn't seen the comedian despite having been in the audience.
"We have to stop getting so offended at every little thing," Vance said Monday. "I'm just so over it."
ALSO READ: 'Chosen by God': A new kind of convert is making the pilgrimage to see Trump
"They're not going to put up with this nonsense," said Roginsky. "[Trump] is coming there and I think probably pouring gasoline on the fire because I can't imagine he's going to stand up and apologize."
Matt Gorman, a Republican strategist, tried to dismiss the importance of the comedian's set by contextualizing it among other big events in Trump's 2024 campaign that he argued had little impact.
"I would be very surprised...that finally this — like from a comedian who no one has heard of except for the Tom Brady Netflix roast — is going to change votes," said Gorman. "The guy was shot in the head in the polls really didn't move."
But this argument veered way off Gorman's projected course when anchor Kate Bolduan suggested Trump would simply do or say something even more outrageous to erase the memory from voters minds.
Roginsky agreed and reminded viewers, none too subtly, about Trump's recent homage to the late Arnold Palmer.
"I wonder whose genitalia we'll hear about," said Roginsky. "I wonder about what dead athlete we're gonna hear about in the locker room."
Watch the video below or click here.