Bad Bunny, the popular Puerto Rican recording artist, signaled his support for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris by sharing a short video clip of her talking about Puerto Rico after a comedian at a rally for Donald Trump made racist jokes about Latinos and African Americans.
Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, host of the Kill Tony podcast, kicked off Trump’s Sunday night rally in New York City by calling Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.”
Bad Bunny, whose name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, later reposted clips on Instagram of Vice President Harris saying: “I will never forget what Donald Trump did and what he did not do when Puerto Rico needed a caring and a competent leader. . . . He abandoned the island, tried to block aid after back-to-back devastating hurricanes and offered nothing more than paper towels and insults.”
(Harris is referring to then-president Trump’s handling of 2017’s Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico and resulted in the deaths of some 2,975 people. While visiting the island to survey the damage, Trump had a televised meeting with island officials and was seen throwing paper towels into the crowd of residents.)
In her video, Harris lays out her plan to help Puerto Rico by decreasing the cost of housing, rebuilding the island’s energy grid, and implementing an economic task force to create more jobs.
The comments come as both candidates fight to win over Puerto Rican voters, especially in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, where some 500,000 Puerto Ricans live.
Meanwhile, a representative for Bad Bunny, who has some 45.6 million Instagram followers, told CNN he is supporting Harris but the social media post was “not an endorsement.”
Two other Puerto Rican artists, Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin, also reshared Harris’s video on Instagram.
The racist and vulgar tone of the Sunday rally angered both Democrats and Republicans, and is being seen as a misstep for the Trump campaign just 8 days before the election.
New York’s own Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, a Democrat, called the event a “hate rally,” while a number of Republicans took to social media to condemn the comedian’s racist comments, including Rep. María Elvira Salazar and Senator Rick Scott, both from Florida; and Rep. Anthony D’Esposito of New York.
The Trump campaign has also sought to distance itself from the remarks. “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign,” Danielle Alvarez, a senior adviser to the campaign, said in a statement to the Washington Post.
We might add that Donald Trump has a long history of making racist remarks himself.