Should I Have Criticized Some of the Jokes at Trump's MSG Rally for Being in Bad Taste?
The Dems talked me out of it.
While watching President Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden I saw comedian Tony Hinchcliffe make some bad jokes about Hispanics and Puerto Rico. That and some other aspects of the rally were not to my taste and could be construed as racist. I have been very critical of both President Biden and Vice President Harris in the past and my thinking at the time was that both to be fair and to preserve what I hope is my reputation for objectivity, I should consider a post criticizing the things I did not like about the rally.
The Democrats changed my mind. There are many distinctions that can be drawn between the two campaigns, but these are the ones that changed my mind about writing a criticism of what a comedian said at Trump’s rally.
Democrats’ reaction to Trump’s MSG rally.
First consider how the President of the United States reacted to Trump’s rally and how he described roughly half of the voters in the Country. (I can only assume that Biden was off his teleprompter at this point.)
And just the other day a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage. Well let me tell you somethin’. I don’t I-I-I don’t know the Puerto Rican that I know or Puerto Rico where I’m my home state of Delaware. They’re good, decent honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters."
Next, here is the would-be Vice President of the United States describing the MSG rally by tripling down on the “Trump is a Nazi” theme." A bad ethnic joke does not compare with this.
“Donald Trump has descended into madness over the last few weeks…. Donald Trump’s got this big rally going at Madison Square Garden. There’s a direct parallel to a big rally that happened there in the mid-1930’s at Madison Square Garden. And, and don’t think that he doesn’t know for one second exactly what they’re doing there.”
If you want to see what the pro-Nazi German American Bund1 was doing at its 1939 MSG rally, you can see some of it below. Watch it and then compare it with what you saw of the supposed Nazis — and the “garbage” — at Trump’s Rally.
But Walz was just playing ‘follow the leader” with his Nazi comparison:
There is a difference between a bad, and not-very-funny ethnic joke by a comedian attempting to make a bad joke, and the President, his Vice-President and would-be Vice-President who intentionally provoke fear and hatred by labeling the opposing party’s Presidential candidate’s supporters as “garbage” and calling their opponent a Fascist and a Nazi.
Fruit of the poisonous tree
It is bad enough that the Democrats keep stoking the Nazi/Fascist fires against their opposition candidate, but it is worse when that candidate has been the target of at least two overt assassination attempts and is known to have been targeted by Iranian hit squads. But their rhetoric is still bearing fruit. Here is another image I saw that cemented my decision not to criticize Trump’s MSG rally in any way.
Funny, huh? It was on display in New York just before Trump’s MSG rally. And no, it is not a joke. These people are serious. As Tim Walz said, “Don’t think that he doesn’t know for one second exactly what they’re doing there.” They have said that Trump “has to be eliminated,” any way possible.
This is the foreseeable result of the “Trump is a Nazi/Fascist/threat to democracy” rhetoric coming from all levels of the Democrat party. More than one in every four Harris/Walz followers believe that Trump should be killed if that is necessary to prevent his election, and another 24% were “unsure.” Remember that when you look at the above image. They want Trump to be killed.
And what of bad taste?
So, yes, Hinchcliffe’s joke was in bad taste. Don Rickels, the “insult comedian,” would have gotten away with it when performing in Las Vegas, but it was dumb today. But I saw one last thing that cemented my decision not to write any criticism that the bad jokes about Puerto Rico and Hispanics were in bad taste. The Harris campaign and its supporters are not to be outdone in that category. Warning, the video at the link is in extremely bad taste. Watch only if you are prepared to be disgusted. https://x.com/i/status/1849509738461135267.
I don’t want to hear another G-damn word about Trump’s bad taste.
The German American Bund limited its membership to American citizens of German descent.
The difference is that the vast majority in the audience at MSG reacted to Hinchcliffe's Puerto Rico/Latino "joke" like a fart in church. Few if any thought it was funny. Meanwhile, you can't tune into a channel on the MSM where liberal panelists don't feel free to "be unburdened by what has been" to make the most demeaning, scurrilous, libelous, profane remarks about Trump AND his supporters. Jimmy Kimmel makes Tony Hinchcliffe look like a paragon of tolerance.
Harris, Biden, and the rest of Democrat Party absolutely detest half the people in this Country. Biden didn't misspeak when he called Trump supporters "garbage," he meant exactly what he said. Heck, Democrat leaders, like Hillary Clinton (and others), have even proposed forcing their political opponents into “re-education camps.”
This election IS about fascism…liberal fascism.
It’s about stopping a Democrat Party that’s hell bent on forcing an all powerful government down our throats; centralized control by an arrogant class of elites who think only THEIR ideas matter…and the rest of us have to shut up and just follow orders.
Well stated, John. Thoughtful piece.