An MSNBC commentator on Monday said the slew of racist remarks that emerged from Donald Trump’s New York City rally on Monday caused even some of the former president’s allies to distance themselves from the rhetoric coming out of his campaign’s closing message – in defiance of “one of the number one rules of Trumpism.”
MSNBC co-host Alicia Menendez said Monday that the comments from the Madison Square Garden rally – which included comedian Tony Hinchcliffe's on-stage monologue about Latinos and Puerto Ricans, whom he said, “love making babies” and live on a “floating island of garbage" – could come back to haunt Trump, particularly in a battleground state like Pennsylvania.
“Largely because it is well poised to be the tipping point state because it is a state where you have Latinos representing about 5% of the electorate, half of that 5% is Puerto Rican,” Menendez told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace on her show “Deadline: White House.”
Menendez added that while people in Puerto Rico cannot vote in the presidential election, their family members and friends in states with Electoral College votes can.
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“The idea that it doesn’t offend all of us is also wrong,” Wallace noted.
“Correct,” Menendez said. “And the tell was, one of the number one rules of Trumpism is you never apologize, you never say you were wrong, you never disavow. And what did we see? We saw the Trump campaign trying to distance itself, you can’t distance yourself from a speaker that you invited in and then allowed to continue onstage…they knew what they were getting.”
She continued by noting that members of Congress, including Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) and Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), are distancing themselves from the remarks.
“Because they understand the power of this community and the power of this vote,” Menendez said.
CNN host Erin Burnett at the start of her show “OutFront” said that the fallout from the rally “could cost Trump the election,” and added that the campaign is “making a rare clean-up attempt tonight.”
Watch the clip below or at this link.
