Former President Donald Trump said it’s “nobody’s fault” that a comedian shared controversial comments about Puerto Rico at his Madison Square Garden rally but added that he doesn’t want anyone making “nasty jokes.”
In part one of an interview released Tuesday on Fox News’s Hannity, the former president addressed remarks made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe that Puerto Rico is a “floating island of garbage” over the weekend that drew scrutiny from both sides of the aisle.
“I still have — I have no idea who he is,” Trump said to host Sean Hannity. “Somebody said there was a comedian that joked about Puerto Rico or something, and I had no idea who was. Never saw him, never heard of him…I had no idea they put a comedian in, which everybody does. You throw comedians in, you don’t vet them, and they go crazy.”
“It’s nobody’s fault. But somebody said something bad,” the former president added.
Hannity suggested that Trump may not have even been at the rally at the time Hinchcliffe was speaking. The former president told ABC News on Tuesday that he did not hear the comedian’s comments and did not know who invited him.
The comments sparked backlash across Hispanic communities and lawmakers from both parties, with Republicans working to distance themselves from Hinchcliffe’s remarks. Trump echoed comments made by GOP allies and Hannity that Hinchcliffe has “nothing to do with the party” and said he “can’t imagine it’s a big deal.”
“I don’t know if it’s a big deal or not, but I don’t want anybody making nasty jokes or stupid jokes,” the former president said.
However, comments made by President Joe Biden regarding Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally set off a firestorm and angered Trump’s supporters.
Biden blasted Hinchcliffe’s Puerto Rico joke, arguing that the “only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.” White House spokesman Andrew Bates immediately started clean-up duty, saying in a statement that the president referred to the “hateful rhetoric at the Madison Square Garden rally as garbage.”
Bates’s statement included a transcript that added an apostrophe to Biden’s comment to adjust the meaning to be singular in reference to the comedian.
“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American,” reads the White House transcript.
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Biden also attempted to clean up his statement in a post on X, however, the president’s comments may damage Vice President Kamala Harris’s last-ditch efforts to appeal to GOP and independent voters who are unsure about who to cast a ballot for in the 2024 election.