The ‘joke’ about Puerto Rico wasn’t the worst part at all.
Amidst the big uproar over the toxic and ugly tone of the MAGA rally in New York on Sunday, a lot of commentators have hyper-focused on one main thing: this being the comedian’s Puerto Rico diss, where he called the island ‘floating garbage’.
Sure, Tony Hinchcliffe’s joke was offensive to Puerto Ricans. But, unfunny as he is, his whole thing is being an ‘edgy’ comedian who crosses lines. His entire set was filled with bits that could be perceived as offensive: but he is a comic and that’s his shtick.
He said worse stuff about Latinos having babies and black people carving watermelons. But again, he’s a comic and that’s his thing.
And racial slurs against Kamala Harris, which are commonplace, predictably appeared as well – including from Tucker Carlson.
What was far more worthy of note during the Madison Square Garden event were remarks made by other contributors *who aren’t comedians*.
In a predictably bizarre event that featured the likes of Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson and the ever unhinged Hulk Hogan, among others, all kinds of things were said – much worse than what what was in the comedian’s act.
Mentally ill supervillain Rudy Guliani had a spectacular rant even by his standards, in which he exclaimed that ‘all Palestinians’ are trained to ‘kill Americans’ from the age of two years old.
According to Guliani, any Palestinian from two years old upwards is essentially a terrorist. The crowd cheers.
But these crowds would cheer anything by now. They could crucify a feminist live onstage and there’d be cheering,
Then again, this is the same Guliani who has questions to answer about 9/11, along with Larry Silverstein, the Kushners and other members of the New York elite of which Trump himself was a fixture (see more about that here).
It goes on.
Sid Resenberg, for example, literally said that ‘we need to slaughter this people‘, referring to the political opposition, who he referred to as ‘degenerates’, ‘low-lifes’ and ‘Jew haters’.
Charming. And totally not psychotic, no sir.
Perhaps the weirdest and most totally-not-psychotic part was the sight of David Rem referring to Kamala Harris as ‘the Anti Christ’ while holding up a crucifix.
This would all make terrific satire: unfortunately it isn’t satirical.
Of course, Barack Obama was also previously the Anti Christ. If you’re the opposition leader and you’re not white, you’re most likely the Devil incarnate. It’s logical.
And if Trump is the Messiah – saved directly by God from an assassin’s bullet, remember – then the opposition must be the Anti Christ. So yeah, that all checks out.
This is almost Jonestown level shit. They weren’t far off from handing out delicious and refreshing Kool-Aid to the audience.
The bit that the MAGA or Republican Party organisers can’t skirt around is that the entire event was micro managed: every guest speaker was vetted and carefully chosen.
Moreover, everyone was reading from a teleprompter – meaning that every speech was vetted in advance.
Which means no one was ‘going off script’. What was said was what was meant to be said.
From an election perspective, the thing is that Trump himself wasn’t so bad: he’s still saying typical Trumpy things, but he wasn’t overly incendiary. It’s these terrible people they’re bringing on as support acts that are doing the most damage.
It’s an insane asylum let loose. The Joker, the Riddler and the Scarecrow wouldn’t be out of place on this stage. And Elon is basically Lex Luthor at this point anyway.
But is it doing any ‘damage’ at all? I’m not sure any of this stuff is a problem to the campaign or the movement.
Liberal media labelling of the event as a ‘Nazi style rally’ is a little misleading and probably calculated to maximise potential PR damage to Trump’s campaign.
It was more like a grotesque cult event. Or some unhinged evangelical event in a Mega Church.
There’s also an element of ritual to these events, complete with mass chanting. The ritual aspect seemed even more apparent at the bizarre Republican National Convention back in July, which came right on the heels of the July 13th assassination hoax.
That event was like a religious ritual, right down to supporters wearing bandages on their right ear to mimic the wounded leader.
But there’s nothing new here. These rallies have been unhinged and grotesque for years. For whatever reason, the MAGA movement has attracted psychotic people and nutjobs to the stage from the start.
And whoever’s running these shows has never seemed concerned about keeping the worst freaks out.
Maybe there’s no reason to be – if you’re still filling out venues with enthusiastic supporters and still winning votes even *with* the freakshow going on, then why change anything?
Among the vast and loyal support base that Trump enjoys, there’s never any real danger of losing followers. Those who are on board are on board to the end: there’s pretty much nothing that’s going to make them hesitate.
Kamala Harris and the Democrats don’t have that invincibility magic: they can and do lose votes and support when they make missteps or misjudgements. Which is how things are meant to be: but not for the Trump movement.
That’s why Trump is so well poised for this election again. He literally can’t lose support, no matter what. It’s as he said years ago: he could stand on Fifth Avenue and kill someone and it wouldn’t lose him any votes.
That’s why these events aren’t managed in a way that might minimise the insanity or ugliness. There’s just no need.
At this point, the Republicans are pretty much revelling in it – rather than being embarrassed.
