Jennifer Lopez will speak at a Kamala Harris rally in Las Vegas this week as the fallout from a comedian’s racist Puerto Rico joke at a Donald Trump rally continues.
Lopez will join Harris at a campaign event in the swing state of Nevada on Thursday after she backed the Democrat earlier this week.
At the Las Vegas event, the Let’s Get Loud singer, 55, will speak about “the importance of voting, what’s at stake for the country with this election,” and why she is endorsing Harris and Tim Walz, the campaign said. Mexican band Maná will also perform.
The singer made it known she had already voted for Harris following Tony Hinchcliffe’s joke where he likened Puerto Rico to a “floating island of garbage” at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday.
Hinchcliffe’s apparent “joke” prompted a tidal wave of backlash from celebrities, politicians, and the public, while the Trump campaign was forced to distance itself from the remarks.
Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny, who has also endorsed Harris, hit back at the Trump campaign on Tuesday by sharing an emotive video about the US territory to his 45.7 million Instagram followers. It was captioned “garbage” and had been liked by 1.6 million people by Wednesday morning.
Singer Ricky Martin also condemned the Trump campaign for Hinchcliffe’s slur, writing in Spanish to his 18.5 million Instagram followers: “This is what they think of us. Vote for @kamalaharris.”
Republicans also came out in force to blast the comments and the Trump campaign for giving them a platform.
“Apparently the October surprise was a presidential campaign committing mass political suicide on stage at MSG,” GOP strategist and former Trump administration staffer Matthew Bartlett told Politico.
GOP congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida said she was “disgusted” by Hinchcliffe’s “racist” comments, while Republican Senator Rick Scott wrote that the “joke bombed for a reason.”
“If Donald Trump doesn’t apologize,” Puerto Rico GOP president Ángel Cintrón said, “we won’t vote for him.”
With large Puerto Rican communities in other key swing states, Hinchcliffe’s comments could have serious repercussions. There are more than 400,000 people born in Puerto Rico or of Puerto Rican descent living in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, according to the US Census Bureau.
Trump was forced to address the racist joke on the campaign trail on Tuesday.
“I don’t know him, someone put him up there. I don’t know who he is,” Trump said, before insisting that he did not hear the comments.
But in the latest twist in the saga, on Tuesday night Joe Biden had to issue a denial that he called supporters of the former president “garbage.”
“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s – his – his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American. It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been,” Biden said on a Zoom call with Latinos.
Following the remarks, the White House insisted the comments were misconstrued and taken out of context.
Trump quickly pounced, saying on Truth Social: “You can’t lead America if you don’t love the American People. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have shown they are both unfit to be President of the United States.”
