Donald Trump’s Puerto Rico “garbage” scandal just got even uglier for him

| 4:47 pm EDT October 28, 2024
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Last night I wrote that the story of Donald Trump’s openly racist rally appeared to be blowing up to the point of becoming an October Surprise. Now that we’re seeing it in broad daylight today, the whole thing is indeed snowballing. It’s the media’s lead story. It’s prompting endorsements left and right. It’s mobilizing Puerto Rican communities in swing states. And it’s got Republican candidates on the defensive. Now it’s gotten even uglier for Trump.

It turns out the featured speaker who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” was also planning to refer to Kamala Harris as a “c*nt” but the Trump campaign vetoed it, according to reporting from the Bulwark. This means that the Trump campaign did indeed vet and approve the line about Puerto Rico. This makes it so much worse for Trump, and takes away his ability to argue that the line was at odds with what his campaign believes in.

But really, the big story here is that this keeps being the big story. We’re entering the final full week of the election, and the lead story is that Donald Trump is indeed as much of a racist as his detractors have always claimed. If this Puerto Rico thing is still the lead story by the end of the week, it’ll have a huge impact on election day.