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tony hinchcliffe
Kamala Harris is Fighting for Puerto Ricans. Donald Trump Is Mocking Them.
This is what’s on the ballot next Tuesday, not just policy and personnel, but decency and respect.
Oct 31, 2024
Last week, I traveled to Puerto Rico for the opening of a much-needed Social Security office in San Juan. There, I spoke at a forum marking the opening alongside Martin O’Malley, the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA) appointed by the Biden-Harris administration.
After the previous office closed due to a private landlord evicting SSA, Puerto Ricans living in San Juan were forced to travel hours just to claim their earned Social Security benefits. Back in March, I first visited Puerto Rico, at the invitation of Puerto Rico Senator at Large William E. Villafañe, for a roundtable discussion and community meeting calling on the Biden-Harris administration to open a new office.
The administration listened to the people of Puerto Rico. Commissioner O’Malley and his team expedited the timeline for opening the new office, originally several years, to only five months. And O’Malley personally traveled to Puerto Rico to mark the opening of the new office.
At the forum, O’Malley called for an end to unequal treatment of Puerto Ricans, including a grievous injustice — their ineligibility for Supplemental Security Income (SSI), an anti-poverty program administered by the Social Security Administration.
A few days after the forum, Donald Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden. His opening speaker, so-called comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, took the opportunity to call Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean.” Hinchcliffe said the quiet part out loud: Trump and the people around him have no respect for Puerto Ricans, and don’t consider them real Americans.
In contrast, the opening of San Juan’s new Social Security office shows that the Biden-Harris administration is listening to Puerto Ricans. When O’Malley decided to prioritize reopening the office, he didn’t know that Puerto Rico was about to be all over the news. He just knew it was the right thing to do.
O’Malley’s term as Commissioner of Social Security ends in January. It’s highly likely that if elected President, Kamala Harris would reappoint him. Donald Trump would not. Instead, he’s likely to reinstate Andrew Saul (the commissioner during Trump’s first term, who used his position to attack Social Security’s workforce and make it harder for people with disabilities to get their earned benefits) or another handpicked crony.
This is what’s on the ballot next Tuesday, not just policy and personnel, but decency and respect. Donald Trump has spent days whining “it was only a joke.” What Trump forgets is that for it to be a joke, it has to be funny.
And there is nothing funny at all about calling Puerto Rico, the Isla del Encanto, a “floating island of garbage.”
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Ocasio-Cortez Warns Trump NYC Rally Was Primer for Taking Power 'by Force'
"That's what they're doing when they're inciting violence and hatred against Latinos, against Black Americans, against Americans who don't have children."
Oct 28, 2024
U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned Monday that the hate-filled campaign rally held by former Republican President Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden in New York City was meant to further prime supporters for another January 6-style attempt to seize power by force if Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris wins next month's election.
Sunday's event—which drew comparisons to a 1939 Nazi rally that packed the iconic Midtown Manhattan arena—featured speakers including billionaire Elon Musk, conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who called the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage."
Although the Trump campaign has attempted to distance the GOP presidential candidate from Hinchcliffe's bigoted remarks, Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said during a Monday interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that Sunday's event was "not just a presidential rally," it was "a hate rally."
"I think it's important for people to understand that these are mini January 6 rallies. These are mini 'Stop the Steal' rallies," Ocasio-Cortez said, referring to the 2021 Capitol insurrection and movement born from the conspiracy theory that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential contest from Trump.
"These are rallies to prime an electorate into rejecting the results of an election if it doesn't go the way that they want, because Donald Trump and that entire cadre of people up on that stage... do not respect the law of the United States of America, and they either want to win this election or they are using rhetoric of taking it by force," she continued.
"That is what they mean, and that's what they're doing when they're inciting violence and hatred against Latinos, against Black Americans, against Americans who don't have children."
Ocasio-Cortez singled out the Republican vice presidential nominee, U.S. Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), for "talking about watering down peoples' right to vote depending on if they can viably carry a child or not."
"We have to understand how unhinged this campaign has gotten and the only reason that the rhetoric has gotten this far is precisely because they are trying to prime the kind of froth that led to the January 6 attack on the Capitol," she said.
"And so it's very important that we connect those dots, and right now the [Trump] campaign is scrambling and they're trying to blame this rhetoric on a so-called comedian?" Ocasio-Cortez added. "This is not a comedian. This is the Trump campaign. They invited this rhetoric on their stage for a reason."
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