‘For Puerto Ricans, this is our October surprise’

Oct 28, 2024

By Eli Stokols, Elena Schneider, Lauren Egan and Ben Johansen

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For months, VICTOR MARTINEZ has been working to make the case for KAMALA HARRIS to Latinos on his Spanish-language radio show in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, acutely aware that DONALD TRUMP seemed to be making real inroads. But the calls he received on Monday suggested that there might be an 11th-hour shift in this swing region of the most important Electoral College battleground.

The stream of racist invective from Trump’s MAGA rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday broke through, especially with voters from Puerto Rico , which one warm-up speaker described as “a floating island of garbage.”

On Monday morning, Martinez, who is of Puerto Rican descent, was flooded with calls, including one from an undecided voter who’d been lukewarm about both presidential candidates until finding out about Sunday’s Trump rally: “They said, 'I'm voting for Kamala Harris.’” That call, he said, was representative of the broader response.

"For Puerto Ricans, this is our October surprise,” Martinez told West Wing Playbook. "This is a gift with a bow from the Trump campaign. This is what we needed to energize the Puerto Rican community, remind the Puerto Rican community of who he is.”

Trump’s campaign disavowed — but never repudiated — comedian TONY HINCHCLIFFE ’s comments several hours after he made them. But almost from the moment he became a presidential candidate, Trump’s politics have been characterized by nativist and at times racist rhetoric. Given his cultural and political ubiquity, it’s essentially baked in at this point — new articulations of vitriol from the former president or his high-profile supporters barely move the needle with the electorate.

And yet, Harris and her team believe Trump’s MSG rally, which drew comparisons to a 1939 Nazi rally in the original Manhattan arena, might be different. Hinchcliffe's viral remark about Puerto Rico, which drew a strong reaction from several celebrities and even some Republican lawmakers, could spark the same kind of backlash with Latinos as Trump’s reference months earlier to “Black jobs.”

Just as the hammer attack on PAUL PELOSI in the days before the 2022 midterms clarified for some the dangers of GOP extremism, the totality of racist and offensive comments by a parade of white, mostly male Trump backers could serve as a final reminder of how hate remains closely associated with his political movement.

On Monday, Harris’ operation worked to respond to the Trump rally in surround sound, holding a press conference with surrogates in Philadelphia, cutting a new digital ad highlighting the remarks and having the candidate herself react to the comments early in the day. Harris told reporters that the rally reflected Trump’s own dark appeals to people’s baser instincts.

“He is focused and actually fixated on his grievances, on himself and on dividing our country. And it is not in any way something that will strengthen the American family, the American worker,” Harris said on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews before leaving Washington for a day of events in Michigan.

“What he did last night is not a discovery. It is just more of the same, and maybe more vivid than usual,” she continued. “Donald Trump spends full time trying to have Americans point their finger at each other, fans the fuel of hatred and division and that’s why people are exhausted with him.”

There were all kinds of clips from the rally pinging around the internet on Sunday and into Monday — like former Fox News host TUCKER CARLSON calling Harris a “Samoan-Malaysian, low I.Q., former California prosecutor” (she’s not Samoan or Malaysian), or former adviser STEPHEN MILLER declaring that “America is for Americans — and Americans only.”

But, more than anything else, it's the Puerto Rico remark that could have an impact in the final eight days of the campaign.

Harris, in her tarmac gaggle, noted that Hinchcliffe’s remark wasn’t much different than many of Trump’s own recent comments: describing America as a “garbage can,” vowing to root out “the enemy within” and declaring that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country.

By that time, a number of Puerto Rican celebrities from BAD BUNNY to LUIS FONSI and JENNIFER LOPEZ had posted on social media — with around 400 million combined followers between them — about Trump’s rally and Hinchcliffe’s disparagement of the island. Bad Bunny, in fact, posted Harris’ own video aimed at Puerto Ricans on his Instagram account (three times!) on Sunday just as Trump’s rally was concluding, later confirming that he was officially backing the vice president’s campaign.

NATE SILVER noted in a piece assessing the rally’s impact that Google searches for Hinchcliffe were surpassing those for TAYLOR SWIFT, writing that a final-week news cycle focused largely on Trump and the most unseemly aspects of his movement “could throw Harris a lifeline.”

Trump is scheduled to campaign in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday. The city’s mayor, MATTHEW TUERK , told West Wing Playbook that the MSG rally on Sunday “was the worst own-goal in history” and might spur the higher turnout among Latinos that Democrats are banking on.

"I've been talking to a variety of Spanish-language media, and I've said to them, this is the wake-up call. Everyone's doing a double take,” said Tuerk, who is of Cuban descent and the first Latino mayor in Allentown’s history.

"I think Puerto Rican voters broadly speaking were leaning toward Harris already or had already voted for her,” he continued. “Anybody who had their doubts, their doubts were based on the economy, maybe some internalized sexism. But I think the people of Allentown, the people of Puerto Rico — we are proud people. When you insult us, it gets our dander up. It pisses us off. We don't typically mouth off — we take some action."

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Drug price “negotiations?” Higher costs and less access to medicines are not what seniors were promised when the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was signed into law. Learn more about the IRA’s unintended consequences.

POTUS PUZZLER

Which president is credited with starting the seventh-inning stretch baseball tradition?

(Answer at bottom.)

CAMPAIGN HQ

THE MESS ON K STREET: After a tough four years following the Trump presidency, the Washington Post has now lost 200,000 subscribers — that’s 8 percent of the paper’s entire paid circulation — in the days after publisher JEFF BEZOS’ decision to block the editorial board from endorsing Harris, according to NPR’s DAVID FOLKENFLIK. Additionally, three of the Post's top 10 most read stories were about the turmoil roiling the paper, including columnist ALEXANDRA PETRI’s piece, headlined, “It has fallen to me, the humor columnist, to endorse Harris for president.”

On Monday, three more members of the nine-person editorial board resigned in protest of Bezos' seemingly self-interested decision to avoid upsetting Trump.

MOLLY ROBERTS, an editorial writer covering technology and society; DAVID HOFFMAN , a contributing editor and recent Pulitzer Prize recipient who’s been with the paper since 1982; and MILI MITRA, who serves as director of audience for the Post's opinions section, all announced their resignation from the board. And MICHELE NORRIS and ROBERT KAGAN, two opinion columnists for the Post, have also left the paper in the days since the surprise announcement.

PEER PRESSURE ACTUALLY WORKS: After months of pressure from friends and fellow billionaires, MIKE BLOOMBERG, the former mayor of New York City, donated about $50 million to Future Forward, a nonprofit organization that is supporting Vice President Harris’ presidential run, NYT’s THEODORE SCHLEIFER reports . The donation follows months of arm-twisting from associates such as BILL GATES, investor RON CONWAY and REID HOFFMAN, the co-founder of LinkedIn and major Harris donor.

Bloomberg also recently spoke with Harris on a private phone call.

THIS IS THE GUY YOU WANT DRAWING UP THE FOURTH QUARTER PLAY? In a video posted to X on Sunday, second gentleman DOUG EMHOFF, Harris’ brother-in-law TONY WEST and Maryland Gov. WES MOORE huddled with Milwaukee Bucks coach DOC RIVERS , who gave the trio some extra motivation for the final week of the campaign.

“We have 30 seconds for one last play,” Rivers said. “Doug, you’re going to travel across all these swing states, right? You’re going to make sure folks know that Kamala is going to take care of all of them just like she takes care of her family.”

Democrats, we would suggest proceeding with caution when it comes to taking play suggestions from Doc.

MOVE OVER, LICHTMAN: With two seconds left, the Washington Commanders were on their own 48-yard line, down three. Out of field goal range, it was left to rookie phenom JAYDEN DANIELS — who was questionable to play with a rib injury — to save the day. Scrambling away from three Chicago Bears defenders, Daniels heaved a ball that may have touched the roof of Northwest Stadium, completing a tipped pass to wide receiver NOAH BROWN, which as JIM NANTZ put it, had the town “going crazy.”

As Washingtonian’s ANDREW BEAUJON wrote this morning, the win could bode well for Vice President Harris. An ancient sports lore has the incumbent party usually winning the presidency when Washington’s football team wins its last home game before the election. One user on Reddit posted an elaborate explanation of the rule and how it could spell good news for Democrats.

WHAT WILMINGTON WANTS YOU TO READ: This piece by The Bulwark’s JILL LAWRENCE , who writes that “the vice president could not be doing more to make her case to the American people.” Lawrence, who has covered national campaigns for over 35 years, said the Harris campaign is “one of the best I’ve ever seen” and the Democratic ticket should continue to emphasize Donald Trump as a “threat to democracy” in the final stretch.

She also compared the “exhilaration” of the Harris-Walz campaign to the late Arizona Sen. JOHN McCAIN ’s 2000 “happy warrior” presidential campaign.

“I think about what [Tim] Walz said: ‘We’ll sleep when we’re dead.’ I think that anything could happen, but that whatever happens, Harris could not be doing more,” Lawrence adds. “We could not ask for more.”

WHAT WILMINGTON DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: This piece by our ZACK COLMAN, who reports that fewer than three in 10 voters say the Biden-Harris administration’s big legislative achievements have improved their lives and communities, according to a new POLITICO-Morning Consult poll. Overall, voters’ attitudes about the administration’s massive domestic spending have either barely budged or slightly dimmed since April, despite six more months of aggressive campaigning by both parties in the run-up to next week’s election.

In fact, people were more likely than they were last spring to say they don’t know what effect the laws have had.

The Oval

DOING HIS CIVIC DUTY AND WHATNOT: President JOE BIDEN cast his early vote in Delaware on Monday, just after grabbing breakfast with Rep. LISA BLUNT ROCHESTER, who is running to replace retiring Sen. TOM CARPER . Biden stood in line alongside New Castle County residents, wheeling one elderly woman into the polling station. She was clearly emotional upon seeing the president.

Aside from the heavy security presence, the 81-year-old Biden resembled your average voter. Those in line next to the president were not in awe — likely because in his 40 years of public service, most Delawareans have crossed paths with him.

A BIDEN LEGACY: As Biden wraps up his presidency, his administration is making a final push for a key domestic priority: reducing the nation’s cancer burden. The federal government, as WSJ’s BRIANNA ABBOTT writes, is testing a new way to prevent treatment disruptions for seven pediatric cancer drugs by improving communication between hospitals, nonprofits and wholesalers.

“No one in this country should struggle for access to the treatment they need, but kids and families facing cancer in particular,” said DANIELLE CARNIVAL, an adviser to Biden who leads his “Cancer Moonshot” effort.

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THE BUREAUCRATS

LIVE EVENT TOMORROW: Hear from FLOTUS policy director MALA ADIGA as POLITICO holds exclusive conversations with women empowered to lead the way in the policy and politics of topics such as technology, education and health care. Doors open at 5 p.m. Join the waitlist to attend or watch here.

Agenda Setting

A DANGEROUS TEAM UP: NATO Secretary General MARK RUTTE on Monday said that North Korea has deployed about 10,000 troops to Kursk, the Russian region where Ukrainian forces seized territory in a surprise attack over the summer, our PAUL McLEARY and ROBBIE GRAMER report. Last week, the U.S. said that at least 3,000 North Korean personnel were undergoing combat training in Russia, though it was not clear if they would join the war.

The Pentagon also confirmed Rutte’s warning on Monday: “We are increasingly concerned that Russia intends to use these soldiers in combat or to support combat operations against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk” region, Pentagon spokesperson SABRINA SINGH told reporters.

What We're Reading

The Rebellious Scientist Who Made Kamala Harris (NYT’s Benjamin Mueller)

Bidenomics Is Starting to Transform America. Why Has No One Noticed? (New Yorker’s Nicholas Lemann)

A small man’s big bet on male insecurity (The Ink)

POTUS PUZZLER ANSWER

In 1910, WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT attended a Washington Senators game against the Philadelphia Athletics. Uncomfortable in his small seat, Taft felt the need to get up and stretch his legs in the middle of the 7th inning, prompting the crowd to stand in solidarity, thinking he was leaving the game.

After a few minutes, Taft returned to his seat, with the crowd following suit. Thus, the “seventh-inning stretch” was born.

A CALL OUT! Do you think you have a harder trivia question? Send us your best one about the presidents, with a citation or sourcing, and we may feature it!

Edited by Steve Shepard and Rishika Dugyala.

A message from PhRMA:

Seniors are feeling the true cost of drug price “negotiations.”

Instead of saving money, some Medicare patients will pay more for medicines.

Others may not be able to get their medicines – 89% of insurers and PBMs say they plan to reduce access to medicines in Medicare Part D because of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Higher costs and less access. That’s not what seniors were promised.

Learn more.