In many instances, persons of Puerto Rican descent are members of our families. My son is married to Pilar Ramos, the daughter of a Puerto Rican father who was born in New York City. I thought about my own " daughter-in-law and love" and my two granddaughters, Aaliyah and Lola who are of partial Puerto Rican descent when I heard the vile remarks made by a little-known comedian named Tony Hinchcliffe at the Donald Trump rally at Madison Square Garden earlier this week.
Hinchcliffe referred to Puerto Rico as "an island of garbage." The Trump campaign tried to distance itself from Hinchcliffe’s words after his crude and racist comments.
In truth, Hinchcliffe was simply echoing the words and values of Donald Trump, who now refers to the United States as "a garbage dump." Put these two comments together, and you have the worldview of the MAGA movement: people of color both inside and outside of the United States are "garbage." This worldview is at the heart of Project 2025 and Christian Nationalism.
They envision a return to a time in this country where white, Protestant males dominated society. Trump tipped his hand about Make America Great AGAIN when he said he wanted a return to the Gilded Age [1892-1908] and the era of President William McKinley. That was a time before women could vote, before income taxes had been instituted, when the use of tariffs was commonplace, before workers could organize for collective bargaining for minimum wages and safe working conditions, and a time when legalized segregation and Jim Crow laws were in full force after the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. That was an American era to which many of the people of this country do not want to return.
To set the stage for Trump's promised deportation of millions of immigrants now living in this country, those people need first to be de-humanized, vilified, and turned into objects of scorn. Referring to fellow Americans in both Puerto Rico and throughout the United States as "garbage" and saying that immigrants are "poisoning the blood" of the country is a step in that direction.
Donald Trump had an opportunity to tell his 20,000 loyalists packed inside and outside Madison Square Garden that he did not agree with the comments of Tony Hinchcliffe. After all, he was standing in New York City, home to the second largest population of people of Puerto Rico descent outside of that island's capital city of San Juan. But he never said a word about the "island of garbage" comment. He simply returned to his newest mantra about " the enemy within", which seems to apply to anyone that does not pledge loyalty to him or to his MAGA agenda.
This was far from the first time Donald Trump showed his disdain for the people of Puerto Rico. We should not forget that when two hurricanes hit that island in 2017, then-President Donald Trump tossed out rolls of paper towels as part of a photo op. As if paper towels could absorb the flooding caused by Hurricanes Irma and Maria!
Those of us who truly love this country and all of its citizens should not be silent while an entire group of Americans are insulted at a political rally featuring someone who wants to be the leader of this nation.
I have a personal connection to people from Puerto Rico and their descendants. I am speaking up on their behalf. There is an enemy within the United States. It is Donald Trump and his nativist allies. The words from Tony Hinchcliffe were not funny; neither is Donald Trump's vision of America. In fact, it is frightening.
The people living in Puerto Rico are not allowed to vote in U.S. presidential elections. However, there are hundreds of thousands of people of Puerto Rican descent living in swing states for this upcoming election. Their vote might decide the outcome of this election. If Trump is defeated, the people of Puerto Rico and those who now live in the United States will have the last laugh!
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The Rev. Dr. Marvin A. McMickle, pastor emeritus of Antioch Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio, is interim senior minister, First Baptist Church of Greater Cleveland. He served as president of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, Rochester, New York, from 2011 to 2019.
