MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Donald Trump made a campaign stop in New York yesterday, at a rally in Madison Square Garden. What is making big headlines today are the racist and misogynistic jokes from speakers who came before him - the ones who were warming up the crowd for the former president. And a warning to listeners, the language here is offensive. For example, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe said there's, quote, "a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it is called Puerto Rico." Well, Hinchcliffe said that was a joke. It was part of a two-minute riff about Latinos and immigrants.
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TONY HINCHCLIFFE: And these Latinos, they love making babies, too. Just know that. They do. They do.
KELLY: It gets quite crude after that. In response, a representative of Trump's campaign said in a statement that, quote, "this joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign." For his part, Hinchcliffe said he loves Puerto Rico and takes vacations there. Well, joining us to talk this through is journalist Julio Vaqueiro, host of "Noticias Telemundo." Welcome.
JULIO VAQUEIRO: Thank you.
KELLY: What reaction are you hearing today to these comments?
VAQUEIRO: Well, a lot, a lot - people really outraged, to be honest, prominent Puerto Rican voices offering their public support for Vice President Kamala Harris in the hours after this Trump rally in New York, including Bad Bunny, the musician, Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Martin. All of them together have 300 million followers in social media, and all of them shared this video of Vice President Kamala Harris talking about her plans for Puerto Rico. And here in Telemundo...
KELLY: Just to clarify, you're talking about - they were sharing the plan - Vice President Harris released her own plan for Puerto Rico, right?
VAQUEIRO: Exactly. Yes, yes. Here in Telemundo, we've been trying to hear from voters themselves, from Puerto Rican voters. And in general, I can say there's outrage, and they are disgusted. Some lawmakers, Puerto Rican lawmakers, Republicans in Florida, which is one of the states that have the largest population of Puerto Ricans, Maria Elvira Salazar, Carlos Gimenez, Senator Rick Scott - all of them expressing their outrage after this comment.
KELLY: You're nodding to Puerto Ricans in Florida. There are millions of Puerto Ricans spread across the U.S., including important swing states - Pennsylvania, for example. How do comments like this make sense at a campaign rally for a candidate who is trying to pick up Latino votes, not scare them away?
VAQUEIRO: Totally. And it actually happened the same day Kamala Harris was campaigning in Pennsylvania, talking with Puerto Rican voters. So there are around half a million Puerto Rican voters or Puerto Rican descendants who live in Pennsylvania, specifically in the Philadelphia area or the surroundings. And it can be very critical if you think about the margins and the small difference by which President Biden won the state in 2020, only a little bit more than 80,000 votes. So it doesn't really mean that all Puerto Ricans are going to vote against President Trump, but it is a reminder of how narrow the margins are, how they have been very narrow in recent elections and the dangers of really outraging a big group of voters a week before voting ends.
KELLY: How much weight, how much credence do you give to the comments from the Trump campaign saying, look, this was a joke; it doesn't reflect the views of former President Trump?
VAQUEIRO: Well, yeah, I mean, they were quick to try and clean up what happened. The truth is that the whole rally had a very intense rhetoric, and we've heard this rhetoric across the whole campaign. Now, President Trump has been careful to - when he talks about migrants - to really say migrants and sometimes specify undocumented immigrants. Here, this comedian went, like, one step further, and he actually talked about people who were native-born, and they can vote, and they're Americans, right? So this is very delicate for the Trump campaign.
KELLY: I mean, just to take a step back, I know you have been reporting on the Latino vote in swing states. How important is that vote likely to be in this 2024 election?
VAQUEIRO: It's going to be crucial. Again, if we think about the margins, 1 in every 4 voters in Arizona, 1 in every 4 voters in Nevada are Latinos. And these are two very important swing states. Pennsylvania, same thing - around 600,000 Latino voters that can really make a difference when we think about the small margins that will give a victory to one or the other candidate.
So we've been working on a podcast series traveling around these swing states. We called it "El Pendulo" because there's no word to refer to a swing state in Spanish. So we think about this pendulum to make a comparison of how these states could go one way or the other. And we try to really meet Latinos where they are and understand what are the issues that they really care about and can really define their votes. We find a very diverse community, a very complex and dynamic community that's living in some of the most important states in this election cycle.
KELLY: Julio Vaqueiro is host of "Noticias Telemundo" and of the special series "El Pendulo" from Radio Ambulante Studios and "Noticias Telemundo." Thank you so much.
VAQUEIRO: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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