US election latest: Team Trump tries to distance itself from comedian’s ‘disgusting’ Puerto Rico comments

You’ve already heard of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, but there are four other candidates trying to become the next US president.

It’s incredibly rare that any parties outside the Democrats and Republicans are competitive in elections – but they can take votes away from the two more established names.

With an election this tight, their involvement could be crucial in swaying the country.

The four other candidates standing this year are…

Jill Stein – Green Party

Ms Stein is no stranger to long-shot presidency bids, having also run in 2012 and 2016.

Announcing her candidacy this time around, the left-wing doctor said the political system is “broken”.

Some Democrats believe that her presidential run in 2016 siphoned votes away from Hillary Clinton and helped Mr Trump win, particularly in states such as Wisconsin – and some have expressed concerns the same could happen again this time.

Reuters

Cornel West – independent

The activist and scholar announced in October that he was ending his bid for the presidency under the Green Party banner and was instead running as an independent.

While he faces long odds in his quest to become the first candidate not affiliated with a major political party to win the presidency, Democrats are quietly concerned he could make a significant impact on the 2024 contest.

Reuters

Chase Oliver – Libertarian Party

Mr Oliver, an activist from Atlanta who previously ran for the US Senate and House from Georgia, was nominated as the Libertarian candidate in May.

The party prioritises small government and individual freedoms, with a mix of policy positions that could be seen as liberal, conservative or neither.

His campaign website calls for major cuts to the federal budget with an eye towards balancing the budget, the abolition of the death penalty and the closure of all overseas military bases as well as ending of military support to Israel and Ukraine.

AP

Claudia De la Cruz – Party for Socialism and Liberation

Ms De la Cruz, 42, is running on several controversial issues.

Her manifesto includes a pledge to support reparations for Black Americans, to institute a single-payer healthcare system and an end to all US aid to Israel.

One that really stands out is a promise to slash the US military budget by 90% – as does her promise to increase certain taxes to eliminate billionaires.

Reuters
How Trump’s big night was overshadowed

It was a night where Donald Trump’s childhood friend called Kamala Harris the devil, the anti-Christ.

Later, one businessman said Ms Harris “and her pimp handlers will destroy our country”.

And then there was comedian Tony Hinchcliffe.

He described Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage” – watch the moment below:

That so-called joke went down like a lead balloon at the time – I didn’t hear a single laugh and, indeed, there was a derisive groan from the Madison Square Garden crowd.

It’s provoked a furious reaction since – Democratic politicians weighing in, along with other prominent individuals, Ricky Martin among them, he posted on Instagram: “That’s what they think of us.”

The Trump campaign has sought to distance itself from the remarks, a spokesman saying they don’t reflect the views of Mr Trump or his campaign.

This was a comedian hired for the night – who won’t form part of any Trump administration – but this was an occasion billed as Mr Trump’s closing address, where he could share thoughts to reinforce and ram home to voters.

There was a tone and content on stage that coloured the message in a way that many would have found ugly and threatening.

It builds on rhetoric we are already used to hearing from Mr Trump himself – talk of “the enemy within” etc.

His difficulty is that some of the material on stage told the story of Trump, as narrated by his opponents.

Reuters
Michelle Obama lays out case for why voters should avoid Trump

Donald Trump’s “obvious mental decline” and “history as a convicted felon” should be enough reason for Americans not to vote for him, Michelle Obama has said.

Speaking at a rally for Kamala Harris in Michigan, the former first lady said she was “angry” at the “indifference” towards the Republican candidate’s behaviour.

“I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m a little angry that we are indifferent to his erratic behaviour, his obvious mental decline, his history as a convicted felon,” she said.

AP

Mrs Obama added: “A known slumlord, a predator found liable for sexual abuse, all this while we pick apart Kamala’s answers in interviews he doesn’t even have the courage to do.

“So, I am praying that those of us contemplating voting for Trump or not voting at all will snap out of whatever fog they are in.

“In any other profession or arena, Trump’s criminal track record and amoral character would be embarrassing and shameful and disqualifying.”

Turning to who voters should consider, Mrs Obama said Democratic candidate Ms Harris was “building a remarkable campaign in record time”.

She also praised her stance on reproductive rights.

“Please do not put our lives in the hands of politicians, mostly men, who have no clue or don’t care what we as women are going through.

“The only people who have standing to make these decisions are women with the advice of their doctors.”
Why it could take days before we know who’s won the election

The election will take place on 5 November, but the winner of the race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump may not be known for days after the polls close.

Why?

As ballots are counted, one candidate may appear to be leading based on early returns, only for a rival to close the gap as more votes are tallied.

In 2020, some states experienced a “red mirage”, in which Mr Trump was leading on election night, before a “blue shift” saw Democrat Joe Biden overtake him.

This was because Democrats tend to live in more populous urban areas, where counting votes takes longer.

Democrats also have embraced mail voting more readily than Republicans, and those ballots take longer to count than election day votes.

Voting by mail is extremely popular in Arizona; nearly 90% of voters cast their ballots early, most by mail, in 2020.

Officials in Arizona can begin processing mail ballots upon receipt, but results cannot be released until one hour after polls close.

Since the 2020 election, Michigan has instituted early in-person voting and begun permitting jurisdictions with more than 5,000 people to begin processing mail ballots eight days before election day.

Officials hope those changes will allow the state to report results more quickly than in 2020, when mail ballots could not be processed in advance.

Nevada’s slow vote counting in 2020 – news outlets did not call the state for Mr Biden until five days after election day – launched countless memes, but officials say changes since then should speed up the process.

Perhaps the most important battleground, Pennsylvania did not have a clear winner in 2020 for four days after election day, as officials sifted through a huge backlog of mail ballots.

The state is among only a handful that do not permit election workers to process mail ballots until 7am (local time) on election day, which means it will likely again take days before the outcome is known.
Biden casts early-voting ballot

Joe Biden will cast his early-voting ballot in the election today, according to the White House.

Many Americans can vote in advance of the 5 November polling day.

The election is too close to call and is set to be the tightest race since at least 2000.

Kamala Harris holds a slender lead over Donald Trump, according to the latest polls.

But the election is not all about who wins the most votes, it’s about who wins in the right states.

Reuters
Was Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally an evocation of Nazism?

An evocation of Nazism? Of course it was, and of course it wasn’t.

Like everything else in this election, the narrative cuts both ways.

Madison Square Garden is the iconic venue in New York City for spectacle. It’s a stage for the big event and lends cachet to a candidate closing out his campaign, no doubt.

In appearing at MSG, Donald Trump writes himself on to the same Wikipedia page as the New York Knicks, several hundred rock concerts and two of the three Ali-Frazier fights.

Throw “Nazi” into the search and you’ll find that too – the biggest Nazi rally in US history took place in the Garden in 1939, just months before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Something called the German American Bund hired it for an event, decorating the stage with swastikas for a rally billed as “pro-Americanism”.

For a venue that celebrates its history, there’s no hiding the shame. No hiding to the extent that it can’t have gone unnoticed by Trump campaign organisers, a team managing a candidate once branded “America’s Hitler” by his own running mate and “fascist to the core” by his former senior military adviser.

Only last week, the description was echoed by his former chief of staff, John Kelly, who told the New York Times that Trump had said he wished his military personnel showed him the same deference Adolf Hitler’s Nazi generals showed the German dictator during World War Two. His claims have been denied by Donald Trump.

The MSG booking has been pounced on by Trump’s opponents, who portray him as a dangerous authoritarian laying out an agenda for autocracy in plain sight. For a second Trump term, they say, read Third Reich.

Indeed, former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has accused Trump of re-enacting the 1939 rally, calling him “more unhinged, more unstable” than when she faced him in 2016.

Trump’s team has branded that particular claim “disgusting,” pointing out that she herself has done an event at MSG and her husband Bill accepted the Democratic nomination there.

Byron Donalds, a Republican congressman from Florida who spoke at the MSG rally, told Sky News: “That’s not even a question and you know that. It’s because opponents are dumb and they’re losing and they’re doing anything to get a rise out of voters. Stop that, be better.”

Pics: Reuters

It’s a “nothing to see here”, is the response, with a certainty that any whiff of outrage will blow over.

Confidence of Republicans is grounded in experience of handling a political candidate positioned competitively in a presidential race despite the baggage of sexual abuse, business fraud, criminal conviction etc, etc. There was a time when any one of those would have been terminal to a political career – not now.

It is controversy as background noise and a significant number of voters have stopped listening – significant enough to keep him in the race.
Harris and Trump head to key swing states as election on knife edge

Kamala Harris is travelling to Michigan today to focus on the economy, while Donald Trump will head to Georgia to gather support among religious voters, as the two enter the final stretch of the 2024 campaign for the White House.

Ms Harris will travel across Michigan to highlight her support for manufacturing jobs and union workers, according to a campaign official.

She’ll also hold a rally with her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, that will feature a performance by singer songwriter Maggie Rogers.

Meanwhile, Mr Trump has two events in Atlanta today, one at the National Faith Advisory Summit and the other a rally, as he tries to win over voters in Georgia, another critical swing state.

The presidential candidates are neck-and-neck in the polls of the battleground states that will determine the winner of the election.

Michigan and Georgia are among the swing states that will decide the 2024 US presidential election.

In the last two elections, Michigan has been the state that has picked the winning presidential candidate.

A key issue here has been Joe Biden’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza.

Activists in the state have been calling for the government to halt its military aid to the country.

Meanwhile, the Democrats flipped Georgia in 2020, with the state’s large African-American population playing a key role in their victory.

Fulton County in Georgia is also the area where alleged election interference took place, leading to one of Mr Trump’s four criminal charges.
Team Trump tries to distance itself from comedian’s ‘disgusting’ Puerto Rico comments

A comedian performing at a Donald Trump rally has come under fire after he labelled Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”.

Comic Tony Hinchcliffe later said “these Latinos, they love making babies” and made crude remarks about their attitude to family planning methods before Mr Trump took to the stage at New York’s Madison Square Garden last night.

The comments sparked significant criticism, including among Republican politicians.

Maria Elvira Salazar, who represents parts of Miami for the Republicans and has participated in recent events for the Republican presidential candidate, wrote on X that she was “disgusted” by the comments.

And Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is of Puerto Rican descent and was born in New York, reacted to the comments during a live stream with Kamala Harris’s running mate Tim Walz.

Mr Hinchcliffe defended himself on X, accused Ms Ocasio-Cortez of having “no sense of humour” and said he loves holidaying in Puerto Rico.

Mr Trump’s team has sought to distance itself from the remarks, with spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez saying the joke did “not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign”.

The row may boost the Harris campaign as it tries to bolster its support with Latino voters, among whom Mr Trump has been working to gain ground.

The Puerto Rican vote is sizeable in Pennsylvania, which is arguably the hardest-fought of the swing states in the 2024 election.

You can read more here…
Welcome back

Welcome back to our live coverage of the race to the White House.

Before we bring you the latest, here is a recap of what happened over the weekend.

Trump hosts homecoming rally in New York

The former president hosted a rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden yesterday.

After an introduction by his wife, Melania Trump, in a rare public appearance, Mr Trump added a new proposal to his list of tax cuts: a tax credit for family caregivers.

His opponent, Kamala Harris, has talked about the “sandwich generation” of adults caring for ageing parents while raising their children at the same time.

Mr Trump also repeated familiar lines about foreign policy and immigration, calling for the death penalty for any migrant who kills a US citizen and saying that the day he takes office “the migrant invasion of our country ends”.

Elon Musk and Hulk Hogan were among the guests at the rally.

Comedian’s racist remarks overshadow rally

The Trump rally has been overshadowed by racist remarks made by a comedian who appeared before the former president.

Tony Hinchcliffe has been widely criticised after he labelled Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”.

He also said “these Latinos, they love making babies” and made crude remarks about their attitude to family planning methods before Mr Trump appeared on stage.

The comments sparked significant criticism, including among Republican politicians and Ms Harris’s campaign.

The Trump campaign has sought to distance itself from the comments as it competes with Ms Harris to win over Puerto Rican communities in Pennsylvania and other crucial swing states.

Michelle Obama rallies for Harris

Michelle Obama came out to huge cheers for a rally for Kamala Harris in Michigan.

In her opening remarks she poked fun at Donald Trump and pointed out Mr Trump had not agreed to a second debate, despite the Democrat candidate’s challenges.

She also said Mr Trump is in “obvious mental decline”.

Pics: Reuters
We’re pausing our coverage

That’s all for now, but we’ll be back with more as the campaigns enter their last full week before election day.

You can scroll down to catch up on Donald Trump’s rally in New York City’s famous Madison Square Garden and Kamala Harris’s visit to Philadelphia.
Trump would let anti-vaccine Robert F Kennedy ‘go wild’ on healthcare

Talking up Robert F Kennedy – who suspended his independent campaign for the presidency to lend his support to Donald Trump – the former president says he would give him power on health issues.

“I’m going to let him go wild on health,” he says.

“I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on medicines.”

RFK is an outspoken anti-vaccine activist.

He has previously told our US partner network NBC News that, faced with another pandemic, he wouldn’t prioritise the research, manufacture or distribution of vaccines.

Reuters
Comedian defends ‘joke’ about Puerto Rico at Trump rally after backlash

A comedian has come under fire for making an offensive joke about Puerto Rico and Latin Americans at Donald Trump’s rally tonight in New York.

Tony Hinchcliffe described Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage” on stage.

“I don’t know if you know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now,” he said.

“I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”

A loud “ooh” could be heard in the crowd, which appeared to drown out the sound of laughter.

He also said he welcomes migrants to the US “with open arms” – before adding “and by open arms I mean like this…” and moving his arms in front of him, as if to say “no”.

“These Latinos, they love making babies too, just know that, they do, they do,” he also said.

“There’s no pulling out, they don’t do that, they come inside just like they did to our country.”

Mr Trump has been regularly criticised for his rhetoric on migrants and he has said he will carry out the largest deportation in US history if he wins the election.

‘Know that that’s what they think about you’

Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is of Puerto Rican descent and was born in New York, reacted to the comments during a live stream with Kamala Harris’s running mate Tim Walz.

“When you have some a-hole calling Puerto Rico ‘floating garbage’, know that that’s what they think about you,” she said.

“It’s what they think about anyone who makes less money than them.”

Mr Hinchcliffe posted on X to defend himself, accusing Ms Ocasio-Cortez of having “no sense of humour” and said he loves holidaying in Puerto Rico.

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Trump says US military would ‘kick China’s ass’

Talking up the US military – which he describes as the greatest in the world – Donald Trump claims he has seen a report about China.

“I saw the other day a report that they issued that if we end up in a war with China, we cannot win,” he says.

“We’re not strong enough. So I said to myself, assuming that’s true, how stupid are you to put out a report like that?”

He then says: “You don’t put out reports like that and it’s not true. We would kick their ass. It’s not true.”
Latin superstar backs Kamala Harris

Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny is throwing his support behind Kamala Harris, sharing a video of her to his more than 45 million followers on Instagram.

Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, is one of the most famous artists in the industry.

His support could be a boost for Ms Harris, as her campaign tries to rally support