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READING, Pa. (AP) — The day before Election Day, 17-year-old girl Carmen Hernandez held a cardboard sign with the Puerto Rican flag outside Trump’s rally in Reading, Pennsylvania, a city that is two-thirds Hispanic.
“What you call trash is our treasure,” the sign read.
While Trump's campaign had quickly distanced itself from a comic's slam on Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage,” Kamala Harris' campaign and other Democrats spent the last hours of the 2024 campaign in the nation's largest battleground state linking him to the joke.
Harris devoted much of her final full day on the campaign trail to reaching Latino voters in Pennsylvania, a swing state that Democrats consider part of their “blue wall” in the Electoral College. She made multiple stops in what is known as the 222 Corridor, after the highway that connects small cities and towns west and north of Philadelphia.
More than 315,000 people who are 18 and older identify as Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania. And in a state where small margins could decide who gets 19 votes in the Electoral College, that community could be crucial for both Democrats, who are seeking to hold onto voters who have long favored their party, and Republicans, who are trying to make further inroads among this demographic.
Tony Hinchcliffe's joke at the Madison Square Garden rally cost Trump the endorsement of popular Puerto Rican artist Nicky Jam and earned Harris the support of superstar Bad Bunny, also from Puerto Rico.
Reading Mayor Eddie Moran, the first Latino to hold the office in his city's 276-year history, said he found it ironic that the next president “is going to potentially be decided by Pennsylvania, but even more so by Latinos,” in communities like Reading, by “some of the individuals that in the past have been least respected to make that decision.”
“He continues to insult us to coming knocking at our door here in Reading, a community that is 70% Latino. And of those, about 30,000 are Puerto Ricans,” Moran said of Trump. “And yet, here he is in a rally today. How insulting is that?”
Carmen Hernandez, the teenager holding the sign outside Trump's rally, said that although she can’t vote Tuesday, her whole Puerto Rican family would vote for Harris.
“I’m here because I want to feel a sense of pride about protecting and defending my island,” said the high school senior.
In Allentown, Harris touted her “longstanding commitment” to the island, whose residents are American citizens but who don't get a say in the Electoral College. Fat Joe, a rapper with Puerto Rican heritage, spoke shortly before Harris and urged voters to support the Democrat.
“The other day at Madison Square Garden, that was no joke, ladies and gentlemen. That was no joke,” Fat Joe said. “Calling Puerto Rico the island of garbage, my Latinos, where is your pride?”
In Reading, a crowd gathered outside a Puerto Rican restaurant called Old San Juan Cafe to catch a glimpse of the vice president. Flanked by Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Harris asked diners about the restaurant and what kind of food she should order to go, opting for a bag of plantains, cassava and rice.
“I’m so excited,” said Claudia Guzman, 52, who had not voted. “I never thought the vice president would come here. Tomorrow I vote for Kamala. Women are coming to power.”
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, a Cuban American, spoke to Trump supporters in Spanish at a Reading rally on Monday, telling them that Spanish “sounds more passionate” and asking for understanding as he jokingly said he spoke Cuban.
“But the Boricuas will understand,” he said, referring to a term used for Puerto Ricans, “and the Dominicans, too.”
Trump, he said in Spanish, is “the only candidate who from now on says you will be a priority, not shipping jobs abroad, not sending factories to other countries, not worrying about the needs of people from other countries,” he said.
Rubio didn't directly address the comic's joke and neither did Trump. Instead, the former president has hailed his relationship with the island, saying “we helped Puerto Rico more than anybody.”
In September 2020, after criticism for a slow response to Hurricane Maria in 2017, Trump released $13 billion in assistance to repair years-old hurricane damage. It took Trump two weeks to visit the island after the storm. He was criticized for an appearance where he threw rolls of paper towels into a crowd.
Emilio Feliciano, 43, dismissed the joke. While his family is Puerto Rican, he said he cared more about the economy and still plans to vote for Trump on Tuesday.
“Boo hoo. We’ve got bigger fish to fry. I will never cry over Puerto Rico being called garbage,” he said at the Reading event. “Is the border going to be safe? Are you going to keep crime down? That’s what I care about.”
But Luis Colon, 45, a Puerto Rican who lives in Reading, walked into the same rally even as he planned to vote for Harris. He said the comments at the Trump rally were a “disgrace.”
“I’m just going in to see the stupidity, the nonsense. I don’t vote for Trump; I don’t root for Trump. Trump is not going for the Latinos; he’s against us. Trump is going to throw us under the bus,” Colon said.
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Associated Press writers Dan Merica in Washington and Darlene Superville in Reading, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.