WashingtonDonald Trump wearing the workers’ signature orange reflective vest and climbing into a garbage truck. The reference is obvious: the former president is looking to put the spotlight on Joe Biden’s slip when he criticized the Republican’s racist rally in Madison Square Garden and, in return, hurt Kamala Harris five days before the election.” What do you think? my garbage truck?” Trump said this Wednesday, sticking his head out the window to address the press. “It’s in honor of Kamala and Joe Biden.”
Republicans have seen a golden opportunity to divert attention from the fire that had been ignited among Latino voters by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s racist remarks at Madison Square Garden and hurt Democrats. The Republican’s campaign team has been feeding the second narrative that Biden called his supporters “rubbish” for hours, although the president’s stutters when he uttered the calamitous phrase leave up in the air whether he was really referring to the mogul’s supporters or to people who treat Latin Americans in a derogatory way.
The sentence was pronounced by Biden during a virtual event with Voto Latino, while Harris was making his final arguments from the Ellipse, the point in Washington from where Trump instigated the assault on the Capitol last January 6. “The other day a speaker at his rally said that Puerto Rico is a floating garbage island,” Biden began. The lapse came next: “[Els porto-riquenys] they are good, decent, and honorable people. The only junk I see floating around is his supporters. The demonization of Latinos is inconceivable and anti-American.” Harris has already distanced himself from the president’s comments. Although it is a futile gesture, because the Trump campaign has already started the machinery.
Not attacking Trump supporters was one of the first lessons Democrats learned in 2016 with Hillary Clinton’s campaign. A few months before the elections, Clinton described the Republican voters as “deplorable”, which ended up costing him at the polls. The Democrats’ approach to Trump voters has been radically different this campaign.
At some of the rallies Harris has organized, the headliners have included former Republican Party voters, or even people who had voted for Trump in the last election and who explained that they now saw that he was just an egomaniac. Harris was looking to show herself as the candidate of reconciliation and also trying to win some votes from the less convinced. With polls as tight as the current ones, the slip of Biden may come out face to face with the Democrats.
Biden’s slip-up also serves Trump to continue fueling his polarizing rhetoric in which everything has become a us against them. The former president likes to repeat at his rally that he took a bullet to protect the rights of his supporters and to be able to say that the Democrats call them “scum” is the perfect element to continue painting them as “the enemy internal”. Once again, he accuses them of being the ones who have established the polarizing rhetoric in the country.
Trump does not apologize for insults
From the garbage truck, Trump also tried to distance himself from the racist slurs made at his rally and said he didn’t need to apologize to Puerto Ricans for what happened there. “I don’t know anything about the comedian. I don’t know who he is, I’ve never seen him. I heard he made a statement, but it’s a statement he made. He’s a comedian, what can I tell you. I don’t know anything of him,” claimed Trump, who, instead, is trying to make Harris pay for Biden’s words.
A conservative American media reported this week that all the speeches had been reviewed by the campaign team, and in fact they forced the comedian to remove a joke where he called Harris a “slut”. It was not the case because of the comments about “trash island” or that “Latinos love to make babies there”.
“I love Puerto Rico and Puerto Rico loves me,” Trump stated from the garbage truck. The former president has again applied the same strategy that he used two weeks ago when he planted himself in a McDonald’s and began to fry potatoes. Trump, above all, is a show animal and always tries to take his battles to this ground where he is strong.
Final stretch
Both Harris and Trump are preparing for the final stretch ahead of November 5. Harris’ campaign team has already announced one tour over the next few days for the seven key states that are at stake. On Thursday, he will travel to Arizona and Nevada, where he will hold rallies in Phoenix, Reno and Las Vegas. Friday and Saturday will follow the route through Wisconsin, Georgia and North Carolina. The last states he will visit will be Michigan on Sunday and Pennsylvania on Monday. The Democrat has left the most decisive state of the 7 hinge states at the end. In principle, Harris plans to spend election night in Washington, although his campaign must confirm this first.
Trump plans to go to New Mexico (which is not a swing state), Nevada and Arizona on Thursday. On Friday he will go further north, passing through Michigan and Wisconsin, while on Sunday he will visit North Carolina and Virginia (which is heavily Republican). He will spend election night in Palm Beach, Florida.
