Former President Donald Trump said he didn’t hear comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s Puerto Rico joke during his Oct. 27 Madison Square Garden campaign rally in New York City and that he doesn’t know him.
“I don’t know him, someone put him up there. I don’t know who he is,” Trump told ABC News’s Rachel Scott during an interview published Tuesday.
Trump also told the ABC News reporter multiple times he didn’t hear the comments made by the comedian, and said that he believes he will win the Nov. 5 election.
Hinchcliffe, who often does roast-style comedy events, said during Sunday’s event: “I don’t know if you guys 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.”
The Trump campaign moved to distance itself from the comments. “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign,” senior adviser Danielle Alvarez said in a statement.
Media outlets, including CNN, ABC News, and The New York Times, have focused on Hinchcliffe’s comments at the Trump rally, publishing articles or commentary critical of the former president.
Vice President Kamala Harris and top Democratic Party surrogates have also targeted the comedian’s Puerto Rico joke in recent days.
“These are fellow citizens he’s talking about. Here in Philadelphia, they are your neighbors. They are your friends, they are your coworkers. ... These are Americans, they’re people,” former President Barack Obama said at an event in Philadelphia on Tuesday, referring to Puerto Ricans. “And that is the reason why this election should not be close. It should be clear.”
The comments landed Harris a show of support from Puerto Rican music artist Bad Bunny and prompted reactions from Republicans in Florida and Puerto Rico.
Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Trump’s running mate, defended the campaign’s Madison Square Garden rally on Monday.
“It was a celebration of America,” Vance said during a political rally in Wausau, Wisconsin, dismissing claims that the event featured discriminatory language.
Hinchcliffe, raised in Youngstown, Ohio, is a stand-up comedian who specializes in roast-style comedy, where comedians take the podium to needle a celebrity target with personal and often tasteless jokes. He has written and appeared on eight Comedy Central Roasts, including ones for Snoop Dogg and Tom Brady.
Hinchcliffe had a Netflix special in 2016, “Tony Hinchcliffe: One Shot,” filmed in one continuous take. He’s best known for hosting the Kill Tony podcast since 2013, where professional and amateur comedians, selected from a bucket, perform for a panel of judges for 60 seconds before receiving critiques.
In a social media post, Hinchcliffe responded to the Madison Square Garden set saying that his critics “have no sense of humor.”
“Wild that a vice presidential candidate would take time out of his ‘busy schedule’ to analyze a joke taken out of context to make it seem racist. I love Puerto Rico and vacation there. I made fun of everyone ... watch the whole set,” he wrote, responding to comments made by Harris’s running mate Tim Walz.
On Tuesday, Trump held a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida, saying that Democrats’ attempts to focus on the Puerto Rico comment as well as “talking about Hitler and Nazis” are a distraction.
With the Nov. 5 election a week away, data show that just over 50 million people have cast early ballots so far, with about 23 million mail-in ballots returned, and 26 million voting early in person.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
