It was the “joke” heard around the world, one that some are speculating – a little too optimistically, perhaps – might help swing the US election. Last Sunday, US insult comic Tony Hinchcliffe described Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage” while standing at a podium emblazoned with “Trump Vance 2024”, in New York’s Madison Square Garden. It prompted a huge backlash among Puerto Ricans, including some very famous members of the community, as well as that rarest of things: contrition from the usually unapologetic Trump campaign, which said that Hinchcliffe’s comments did not reflect the (famously moderate) views of Donald Trump himself.
I should stop here to apologise to anyone who has come to The Guide for a break from the oxygen-hogging, 24/7 carnival that is the US election. Normal service will resume next week, I promise – but this is a political story that is, at its very least, culture-adjacent. And it prompts an interesting question: how did Hinchcliffe, a shock comic whose routines would make even the crowd at Late ‘n’ Live retreat to their fainting couches, end up as the opening act at a major political rally? The answer has a lot to do with the growing bromance between insult comedy and the right wing.
