Editorial: Trump's Garden party of crude, racist hatred

Donald Trump knows New York.

So surely he knew that holding a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden would inevitably evoke allusions to the one that out-and-out Nazis staged there in 1939. It remains a flashpoint of fascism.

Trump’s Sunday night rally didn’t just recall that event — it resembled it.

There hasn’t been anything so hateful at America’s most famous sports palace since Nazis flaunted swastika flags and cracked jokes about “President Rosenfeld.”

‘A floating island of garbage’

Back then, the targets of hatred were Jews. Today’s targets of hatred are immigrants, especially if they speak Spanish.

Trump selected so-called comedian Tony Hinchcliffe to open the program. Here’s what he said: “I don’t know if you know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”

Another despicable off-color remark followed, about Hispanics and birth rates.

Perhaps Hinchcliffe is so uninformed that he doesn’t know that Puerto Ricans are American citizens. But that’s beside the point.

MAGA Square Garden

The sewage that spewed from his mouth at MAGA Square Garden is consistent with the tenor of Trump’s campaign. He’s as responsible for what Hinchcliffe said, despite his campaign’s feeble attempt to disclaim it, as if he had said it himself.

Notably, the campaign did not repudiate Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who retweeted Hinchcliffe’s remark. Like father, like son.

This new low point in American political history will not go unnoticed in Florida, where Latinos accounted for 17% of votes cast in 2020, and especially on the I-4 corridor, where many Puerto Ricans call Osceola and Orange counties home.

But it’s not only Puerto Ricans who rightfully resent what was said. Every decent American should.

A campaign that consistently appeals to people’s worst instincts to get votes takes them to be as bigoted as the campaign itself, and in a week or so, the world will know how true that is.

‘A bunch of degenerates’

Hinchliffe wasn’t the only invited speaker spewing vile hatred at the Garden.

Sid Rosenberg, a conservative New York radio “shock jock” who worked at stations in West Palm Beach and Miami, referred to Democrats this way: “The whole f—–g party, a bunch of degenerates, lowlifes, Jew-haters and lowlifes.” He said that “f—–g illegals get whatever they want.”

These were the warmup speeches in advance of the headliner, who might just be the next president of the United States.

What has happened to this country? After nine years of Trump, too many Americans have grown numb to his nativist, racist, sexist ways, from “Lock her up!” to “grab’em by the p—y” to “they’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats.”

Trump’s campaign conspicuously did not repudiate the vile comments by his speakers (except for the “island of garbage” talk), and Trump himself repeated a refrain about “the enemy within.”

The enemy within is that kind of an appeal to voters. It should not be only the Democrats and the media who take a stand against it. Republicans should, too, but too few have.

Criticism from Miami

Rep., Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Miami, whose parents fled Castro’s Cuba, said she was “disgusted” and that “this rhetoric does not reflect GOP values.” Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Miami, a Cuban immigrant, said it “definitely doesn’t reflect my values.”

The trouble is, it does reflect the values of every Republican who does not condemn it.

Florida Sen. Rick Scott, running for re-election, said Hinchcliffe’s crude attack on Puerto Rico is “not funny and it’s not true.” He praised Puerto Ricans as “amazing people and amazing Americans.”

Scott needs to do more to effectively disassociate himself from what Trump’s presidential campaign has come to be.

It’s time for Scott and all Republicans to reaffirm, repeatedly and unmistakably, what Americans once took for granted: We’re a nation of immigrants. We owe our greatness to the ambition, talent, energy, hard work and, above all, overwhelming patriotic love for our democracy that they brought to these shores.

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The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

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