Mike Johnson vows major changes to Affordable Care Act if Trump wins election
Dan Diamond – October 30, 2024
A cardboard cutout of former President and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump wearing a Trump Force Captain hat is seen behind Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) as he speaks to supporters, at a Trump Force 47 campaign office in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on October 28, 2024. (Photo by SAMUEL CORUM / AFP) (Photo by SAMUEL CORUM/AFP via Getty Images)More
House Speaker Mike Johnson pledged “massive reform” of the Affordable Care Act if Donald Trump is elected president, reopening a politically sensitive policy issue for Republicans a week before Election Day.
Johnson (R-Louisiana), who appeared at a campaign event Monday for a Republican House candidate in Pennsylvania, told attendees that GOP leaders are again weighing how to overhaul the 14-year-old law, which provides health coverage to tens of millions of Americans and has been a frequent target of Republican repeal efforts.
“Health-care reform’s going to be a big part of the agenda,” Johnson said, wearing a personalized jacket emblazoned with the Trump-Vance campaign logo. He added that a caucus of Republican physicians has shared proposals with him and that GOP leaders hope “to take a blowtorch to the regulatory state” and “fix things.”
“No Obamacare?” an attendee asked the speaker, invoking the term popularized by Republicans to describe the health law.
“No Obamacare,” Johnson responded. “The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work, and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.”
Johnson’s comments were first reported by NBC News, which published video of his remarks.
The Affordable Care Act, which Democrats enacted in 2010, has become one of the party’s more popular achievements after initially being perceived as a political liability. Sixty-two percent of adults had favorable views of the law in April, up from 38 percent a decade earlier, according to polling by KFF, a nonprofit health policy research, polling and news organization.
The law also has transformed the nation’s health-care landscape. The White House last month touted data showing that nearly 50 million Americans have obtained health coverage through the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges since they were established more than a decade ago, helping to lower the national uninsured rate to record lows in recent years.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has promised to expand enrollment through the law if elected president.
Republicans, meanwhile, mounted dozens of efforts in Congress to overturn the law, and Trump won the presidency in 2016 by pledging to “repeal Obamacare.” But several Trump-led repeal efforts fell short – with the Senate in July 2017 coming one vote away from overturning the Affordable Care Act – and the law’s near death catalyzed new support for it.
The backlash to Republicans’ repeal efforts also helped Democrats win back control of the House in 2018, prompting GOP leaders in recent years to avoid talking about doing away with the law. Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), last month even praised Trump as a good steward of the Affordable Care Act.
But Democrats remain eager to highlight Republicans’ past pledges to “repeal Obamacare,” with the Harris campaign and its allies on Tuesday night portraying Johnson’s comments as a vow to do away with the Affordable Care Act.
“Speaker Mike Johnson is making it clear – if Donald Trump wins, he and his Project 2025 allies in Congress will make sure there is ‘no Obamacare,’” Sarafina Chitika, a campaign spokeswoman, said in a statement. “That means higher health-care costs for millions of families and ripping away protections from Americans with preexisting conditions like diabetes, asthma, or cancer.”
Johnson “finally told the truth about Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican allies’ agenda for health care in their first 100 days. They want to repeal the ACA,” Leslie Dach, the chairman of Protect Our Care, a Democratic-aligned health-care advocacy group, wrote in a statement.
Johnson’s office disputed Democrats’ interpretation, with a spokesman accusing Harris of “lying about Speaker Johnson” by claiming that he had pledged to repeal the law.
“The audio, transcript, and even the NBC News article her campaign cites make clear that the Speaker made no such comments,” spokesman Taylor Haulsee wrote in a statement.
Haulsee declined to comment on what health-care changes Johnson would pursue next year or whether the House speaker would rule out an attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
The Trump campaign said that he did not support repealing the Affordable Care Act.
“This is not President Trump’s policy position,” campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Tuesday night. “As President Trump has said, he will make our healthcare system better by increasing transparency, promoting choice and competition, and expanding access to new affordable healthcare and insurance options.”
Trump has worked to downplay his past criticism of the Affordable Care Act ahead of the election, saying in a September debate that he would keep the “lousy” law in place, while acknowledging he still hopes to replace it with something “much better.” Vance recently floated a plan to roll back the law’s approach to how chronically ill people shop for health plans.
More voters side with Democrats on questions related to health-care costs and coverage, according to recent surveys. A KFF poll released in September found that 48 percent of voters trust Harris to do a better job than Trump on handling health-care costs, compared with 39 percent who favor Trump. The nine-point edge is one of Harris’s strongest advantages against Trump, who retains double-digit polling leads on the economy and immigration.
Former President Trump called fascist; what does term mean?
Wes Woods II, Ventura County Star – October 29, 2024
Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly called his former boss and 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump a fascist, a term that’s getting a closer look.
“Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy,” he said.
Kelly said the definition described Trump.
“So certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America,” he said.
Kelly added: “Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”
President Donald Trump and White House chief of staff John Kelly in 2017.
Did Trump respond?
Former President Trump criticized Kelly on his social media site Truth Social on Wednesday afternoon.
“Thank you for your support against a total degenerate named John Kelly, who made up a story out of pure Trump Derangement Syndrome Hatred!” Trump wrote. “John Kelly is a LOWLIFE, and a bad General, whose advice in the White House I no longer sought, and told him to MOVE ON!”
“Yes, I do,” she said at a CNN Town Hall event with Anderson Cooper. “And I also believe that the people who know him best on this subject should be trusted.”
What is fascism?
According to the Merriam-Webster dictonary, fascism is “a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition.”
According to the Cambridge dictionary, the word means “a political system based on a very powerful leader, state control, and being extremely proud of country and race, and in which political opposition is not allowed.”
According to dictionary.com, it means “a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.”
Jimmy Kimmel Makes Plea to Republicans Ahead of Election: “This Is About Sanity and Security and Democracy”
Carly Thomas – October 29, 2024
Jimmy Kimmel kicked off his latest episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! with a message directly for moderate Republicans.
Ahead of the show, the host posted on social media, asking for people to “ask a Republican you love” to watch Wednesday night, as he has a “special monologue” for them.
“I assume you’re watching this because you care about the person who asked you to watch it, or maybe you’re just open-minded and not afraid to hear somebody who might not agree with you speak,” Kimmel said to kick off the show. “Either way, thank you for giving me 15 minutes of your life to talk about Donald Trump. Maybe you love him, and you’ll vote for him no matter what he says or what he does. Maybe you hate the other side so much you’ll look past anything he says or does. Or maybe there’s a little voice in the back of your head saying, ‘I might not want this guy driving the bus.’”
The host continued, “But what I’m asking you to hear isn’t what I have to say, that doesn’t matter. I want you to hear what he’s saying. Most Americans — and you are probably one of them — don’t have time to watch his rallies and his speeches and all the interviews. because you have other things to do. But I don’t have other things to do. This is all I have to do. And because I don’t have other things to do, I’ve seen all or at least part of every interview, every speech, every all-caps social media post from this man for the past nine years.”
Over the nearly 20-minute monologue on Wednesday’s episode, Kimmel made a point to only “focus on words that came out of his [Trump’s] mouth.” He played dozens of clips of the former president making comments about a range of topics, including his health care plan he’s been teasing since 2016, childcare, windmills as well as things that are “not real.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be running for President? Aren’t you supposed to be worried about important topics? Kimmel asked at one point. “And here’s the thing, it’s kind of funny, these silly, random rants of his, and it would be fine if he was hosting a podcast or selling knives at the farmers market. But he’s supposed to be leading us. People are listening to him and the country is getting crazier because he makes it OK to be nuts.”
Later, the host emphasized how presidents typically don’t sell products. However, there’s one “who sells a lot of them.” Kimmel proceeded to show a video montage of all of Trump’s ads for products he sells, including Trump coins, coffee table book, trading cards and a “God Bless the USA” bible, among others.
After also noting that several Republicans and former Trump administration members have confessed they’re not endorsing Trump this election, Kimmel began to wrap up his monologue with a message.
“Either he doesn’t care about the truth or he has a hard time understanding what the truth is. Both very bad options!” he said. “So now we have an election on Tuesday, and Trump has made it very clear that if he wins, it was an honest election. And if he loses, it was a rigged election.”
Kimmel continued, “He has no plan to lower grocery prices or to make us safer or to protect the border. The only plans he has is to file lawsuits, legal challenges, settle scores and punish his enemies. … He wants to turn it into ‘Of me, by me, for me.’”
“Listen, politics in a lot of ways is like sports. You probably just root for the team your dad roots for. Maybe you’ve been a Republican your whole life. That’s your team and it feels wrong not to vote for them. But this time around, you wouldn’t be alone. You have a lot of company,” he added. “Most elections are about policy. This one is not. This is about sanity and security and democracy.”
Column: Listen to Trump’s former aides: He’d be far more dangerous in a second term
Doyle McManus – October 28, 2024
Donald Trump “never accepted the fact that he wasn’t the most powerful man in the world — and by power, I mean an ability to do anything he wanted, any time he wanted,” his former chief of staff said. (Alex Brandon / Associated Press)
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Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, retired Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, broke a long silence and denounced his former boss as a man who fits “the general definition of fascist.”
The conservative, normally taciturn Kelly was moved to speak out after Trump condemned former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Adam B. Schiff and other Democrats as “the enemy from within” and said he would deploy troops onto the nation’s streets to suppress opposition.
“Using the military on, to go after, American citizens is … a very, very bad thing,” Kelly told the New York Times. “Even to say it for political purposes to get elected, I think it’s a very, very bad thing.”
Kelly wasn’t the only former Trump aide to warn that the GOP candidate shouldn’t be trusted with the nuclear codes. Dozens of people who worked in senior positions in the Trump administration have chimed in. Gen. Mark A. Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called him “fascist to the core … the most dangerous person to the country.” Former national security advisor John Bolton said he was “unfit to be president.”
Trump “never accepted the fact that he wasn’t the most powerful man in the world — and by power, I mean an ability to do anything he wanted, any time he wanted,” Kelly said.
Did those warnings from authoritative sources — eminent figures Trump once appointed to high-ranking jobs — have any effect on his voters as election day approaches?
Readers of this column won’t be surprised to learn that I agree wholeheartedly with Kelly, Milley, Bolton and their colleagues: Trump is a danger to our democracy.
He neither understands nor respects the Constitution. He yearns openly to rule the way China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin do, as an autocrat answerable to no one. “He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist,” he said admiringly of Xi.
Some, his hardcore base, agree with everything the former president says right down to the coarsest insults.
Others admit to qualms about Trump’s style but say they support him because they hope he can bring back the low-inflation prosperity of his first two years in office.
But a third group, which includes many independents as well as moderate Republicans, is the most perplexing. Not only do they dislike Trump’s style, they worry about some of his positions: his desire to unravel Obamacare, his threats to deploy the military against domestic opponents, his indiscriminate tariffs, his plan to fire thousands of civil servants and replace them with MAGA loyalists.
But many say they don’t think Trump would — or could — actually make those things happen.
In a focus group last week organized for NBC News by the public opinion consulting firm Engagious, for example, an Atlanta home inspector named Kevin said he worried that Trump’s tariffs would make consumer prices go up.
“It’s a bad idea,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s going to really go anywhere. I think it’ll cost too much money. It’ll be too difficult politically.” He’ll probably vote for Trump anyway, he said.
Pollsters have called this Trump’s “believability gap.” Voters hear what he says, but they discount it — they think that “he’s just talking” or that surely somebody will stop his more outlandish ideas.
But there are two problems with those Trump voters’ self-comforting rationalizations.
The first is that Trump already has a track record of trying to do most of those things. He tried to repeal Obamacare, but a handful of moderate Republican senators got in his way. He issued an executive order that would have enabled him to replace civil servants with political appointees, but time ran out on his term before he could use it.
And when demonstrators assembled across the street from the White House, he urged military officials to deploy troops and shoot protesters in the legs — but Gen. Milley and Defense Secretary Mark Esper stopped him.
“When he starts talking about using the military against people … I think we should take that very seriously,” Olivia Troye, who served as an aide to Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, told my colleague Noah Bierman recently. “He actually talked about shooting Americans. I was there … I witnessed that.”
The second problem with the “believability gap” is that if Trump gets back to the White House, he will be more likely to get his way.
He has frequently complained that he made a mistake in his first term by appointing aides like Kelly, Milley and Bolton, who believed it was their duty to restrain the president’s ill-considered impulses. If he gets a second term, he’ll surround himself with more people who will do his bidding without raising pesky questions.
He’ll run into less opposition from other institutions too.
Republicans in Congress, who occasionally restrained Trump when he was president, have purged most of the moderates from their ranks. Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah is retiring. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, an occasional Trump critic, will no longer be his party’s leader in the Senate.
Federal courts may be more hospitable, too, thanks to judges Trump appointed his first time around.
So moderate Republicans and independents who are tempted to vote for Trump because they hope he will lower taxes or improve the economy should think long and hard about the risks of that bargain.
When Trump says he’ll order prosecutors to go after Joe Biden and “the Pelosis,” he means it. When Trump says he’ll punish businesses like Amazon if he doesn’t like their owners’ views, he means it. When Trump says he believes the Constitution gives him “the right to do whatever I want as president,” he means it.
And this time, he would know better how to turn his wishes into reality. A second Trump term wouldn’t be a benign rerun of the first version. As his former aides are trying their best to warn us, it would be far worse.
Trump’s Puerto Rico fallout is ‘spreading like wildfire’ in Pennsylvania
Meredith Lee Hill – October 28, 2024
US comedian Tony Hinchcliffe speaks during a campaign rally for former US president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden in New York on October 27, 2024. (Photo by ANGELA WEISS / AFP) (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)More
Donald Trump has a serious Puerto Rico problem — in Pennsylvania.
Many Puerto Rican voters in the state are furious about racist and demeaning comments delivered at a Trump rally. Some say their dismay is giving Kamala Harris a new opening to win over the state’s Latino voters, particularly nearly half a million Pennsylvanians of Puerto Rican descent.
Evidence of the backlash was immediate on Monday: A nonpartisan Puerto Rican group drafted a letter urging its members to oppose Trump on election day. Other Puerto Rican voters were lighting up WhatsApp chats with reactions to the vulgar display and raising it in morning conversations at their bodegas. Some are planning to protest Trump’s rally Tuesday in Allentown, a majority-Latino city with one of the largest Puerto Rican populations in the state.
And the arena Trump is speaking at is located in the middle of the city’s Puerto Rican neighborhood.
“It’s spreading like wildfire through the community,” said Norberto Dominguez, a precinct captain with the local Democratic party in Allentown, who noted his own family is half Republican and half Democratic voters.U.S. & World NewsLatest national and global stories
“It’s not the smartest thing to do, to insult people — a large group of voters here in a swing state — and then go to their home asking for votes,” Dominguez said.
The timing couldn’t be worse for Trump. Almost a week before Election Day, he’s pushing to cut into Harris’ margins among Latinos, especially young men who are worried about the economy. But the comments from pro-Trump comedian Tony Hinchcliffe Sunday night, referring to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage,” has reverberated throughout Pennsylvania and elsewhere, prompting even the former president’s Republican allies to defend the island and denounce the comments. And with the race essentially a toss up, every vote counts — especially in Pennsylvania.
“This was just like a gift from the gods,” said Victor Martinez, an Allentown resident who owns the Spanish language radio station La Mega, noting some Puerto Rican voters in the area have been on the fence about voting at all.
“If we weren’t engaged before, we’re all paying attention now,” Martinez said. He added the morning radio show he hosts was chock-full of callers Monday sounding off on the Trump rally comments, including a Puerto Rican Trump supporter who is now telling people not to vote for the former president.
In response to questions on the comments, and whether Trump was planning to publicly denounce them, Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, “Due to President Trump’s plans to cut taxes, end inflation, and stop the surge of illegal immigrants at the southern border, he has more support from the Hispanic American community than any Republican in recent history.”
Local Democrats like Dominguez argue the fallout at the very least reminds Puerto Rican voters of Trump’s previous comments about the island, calling it “dirty” and tossing paper towels to survivors during a 2017 visit after Hurricane Maria devastated the island and killed more than 2,000 people.
And in a sign of how worried local residents are, a school district in Allentown announced Monday morning that it had canceled classes for Tuesday, when Trump visits.
The Trump campaign has tried to distance itself from the comedian’s comments about Puerto Ricans and Latinos. Danielle Alvarez, senior adviser to the Trump campaign, said Sunday evening that the “joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.” Another Trump adviser said the speakers’ remarks were not vetted prior to the rally. Key Republican lawmakers in Florida, New York and other states with large Puerto Rican populations quickly denounced the comments, saying it didn’t reflect GOP values.
But other Trump allies, and his running mate JD Vance, have downplayed the rhetoric as just jokes. During a rally in Wisconsin Monday, Vance said that he had not heard the joke and that “maybe it’s a stupid racist joke” or “maybe it’s not” but Harris saying people should get offended by a comedian’s jokes is “not the message of a winning campaign.”
“Our country was built by frontiersmen who conquered the wilderness,” Vance said. “We’re not going to restore the greatness of American civilization if we get offended at every little thing. Let’s have a sense of humor and let’s have a little fun.”
At a rally on Monday night in Racine, Wisconsin, Vance said that he was not worried “that a joke that a comedian who has no affiliation with Donald Trump’s campaign told,” would cost the campaign votes among minority groups in swing states. “I just don’t buy that. I don’t think that’s how most Americans think, whatever the color of their skin,” he said.
Donald Trump Jr. and other MAGA Republicans have shared social media posts with a similar message.
But at least one local Republican is denouncing the remarks.
“The comments made by this so-called ‘comedian’ at Madison Square Garden weren’t funny, they were offensive and wrong,” state Rep. Ryan Mackenzie told POLITICO. The Republican is locked in a close race against Democratic Rep. Susan Wild, who represents Allentown and a key part of the swingy Lehigh Valley. Mackenzie said he was still looking forward to Trump’s visit.
And, some Pennsylvania GOP strategists, even as they tried to downplay the electoral fallout, acknowledged it was an unforced error at the very least.
Jimmy Zumba, a Latino GOP strategist based in the Lehigh Valley, called them “stupid comments,” that were clearly not based on the immigration and crime themes that Republicans have tried to hammer this cycle.
“Obviously I would love to be talking about that, to be on the offense on that, but right now we’re on the defense trying to defend comments that are not from the campaign or President Trump,” Zumba said, adding he didn’t believe the matter is “going to shift completely a Latino vote.”
But many local Puerto Rican community members are unwilling to let go of the comments.
Roberto L. Lugo, President of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the National Puerto Rican Agenda, said the nonpartisan group will be releasing a letter, shared exclusively with POLITICO, condemning the comments and urging Pennsylvania Puerto Ricans not to vote for Trump. Lugo, who was born in Puerto Rico and now lives in Philadelphia, said Pennsylvania Puerto Ricans are “really disturbed” over the comments.
“I’m not a Republican, I’m not a Democrat, I’m independent,” Lugo said. “But at this point, it’s not about political, partisan issues. It is about the respect and honor our Puerto Ricans and Latinos deserved as citizens and legal residents of this country, that’s the issue.”
“We held Trump and his campaign responsible for this disgraceful act,” he added.
State Rep. Danilo Burgos, co-chair of the “Latinos con Harris” group in Pennsylvania, said residents have spread the comments on social media and within Philadelphia’s Puerto Rican community.
“I saw two ladies in particular saying they were considering voting for Trump, but they’re not now,” he said, “because of the comments.
He also said that Puerto Rican megastar Bad Bunny’s endorsement of Harris could be a game changer in Pennsylvania, arguing that a third-party candidate in Puerto Rico’s governor’s election surged from a double-digit deficit because the superstar got involved. Bad Bunny has not endorsed a candidate in that race, but has paid for billboards opposing Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon’s New Progressive Party.
“She was running away with the election,” he said. “Now that election is a statistical tie.”
Notably, Donald Trump Jr., Trump’s son, made a stop in Allentown on Monday, ahead of a planned event in Coplay, Pennsylvania, a Lehigh Valley borough outside Allentown.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro on Monday also noted Trump made the choice not to distance himself from the comments.
“If Donald Trump really wanted to disassociate himself with that, the first thing he would have said when he came onto the stage at Madison Square Garden was, ‘hey, listen, I heard that person’s attempt at humor. It was not funny. I stand with the Puerto Rican community,’” Shapiro told a local talk news radio station in northeast Pennsylvania. “He didn’t do that.”
Republicans have been eager to peel away Puerto Rican and Latino voters from Democrats in Pennsylvania and other swing states. Trump actually made gains among voters in North Philadelphia’s Puerto Rican-dominated neighborhoods in 2020. Harris sought to shore up her support in the neighborhood during a Sunday visit to Freddy and Tony’s, a local Puerto Rican restaurant, where she was speaking about her plans for the island around the same time that Trump’s rally featured the disparaging comments.
Kenny Perez, an employee at Freddy and Tony’s, said in an interview at the restaurant on Monday that he’s often turned off by politics and normally doesn’t vote. But he condemned the Trump rally comments and said while he’s still deciding, this year, he thinks he’ll vote for Harris and “definitely not for Trump.”
“I think he gave Kamala a boost,” Perez added.
Other Puerto Ricans want an apology from Trump himself.
“They should think before they put a person in front of millions of people to talk like that and joke like that,” said Ivonne Concepion, who also lives in North Philadelphia. “He’s gotta say ‘perdon,’ not just sorry, but from here,” she said pointing to her chest.
Fact check: Debunking 16 false claims Trump made at Madison Square Garden
Daniel Dale, CNN – October 28, 2024
Former President Donald Trump repeated a series of false claims, many of which have long been debunked, about immigration and other subjects in his speech at a Sunday evening rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
Here is a fact check of 16 false claims he made in the speech.
FEMA and North Carolina: Trump falsely claimed of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to Hurricane Helene: “They haven’t even responded in North Carolina. They haven’t even responded. There’s nobody, they don’t see any FEMA.” This is not even close to true; FEMA immediately responded to the disaster in North Carolina and said Friday that it had more than 1,700 staff deployed in the state. FEMA said on October 16 that it had approved more than $100 million in individual aid to North Carolina residents.
At a briefing in early October, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, said, “We’re grateful for the quick actions and close communications that we have had with the president and with the FEMA team.” State emergency management director Will Ray said at the briefing: “We’re grateful for the support not just from the 22 states that have sent teams to support us but also from our FEMA team and other members of the federal family.”
FEMA and migrants: Trump falsely claimed that FEMA didn’t respond in North Carolina because “they spent their money on bringing in illegal migrants, so they didn’t have money for Georgia and North Carolina and Alabama and Tennessee and Florida and South Carolina.” He repeated, “They didn’t have any money for them. They spent all of their money on bringing in illegal immigrants.”
FEMA did not spend its disaster relief money on undocumented people. Congress appropriated the agency more than $35 billion in disaster relief funds for fiscal 2024, according to official FEMA statistics, and also gave FEMA a much smaller pool of money, $650 million in fiscal 2024, for a program aimed at helping communities shelter migrants. Contrary to Trump’s claims, these are two separate pots of funds.
Trump’s favorite immigration chart: Trump repeated his long-debunked false claim that his favorite chart about migration numbers at the southern border — which he had fortunately turned his head to look at when a gunman tried to kill him at a campaign rally in July — has an arrow at the bottom pointing to “the day I left office,” when, he said, the US had “the lowest illegal immigration that we’ve ever had in recorded history.”
The chart doesn’t show that. In fact, the arrow actually points to April 2020, when Trump still had more than eight months left in his term and when global migration had slowed to a trickle because of the Covid-19 pandemic. After hitting a roughly three-year low (not an all-time low) in April 2020, migration numbers at the southern border increased each month through the end of Trump’s term.
Harris’ border role: Trump repeated these false claims about Vice President Kamala Harris: “She was the border czar. She was in charge of the border.” Harris was never “border czar,” a label the White House has always emphasized is inaccurate, and she was never in charge of border security, a responsibility of Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. In reality, President Joe Biden gave Harris a more limited immigration-related assignment in 2021, asking her to lead diplomacy with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in an attempt to address the conditions that prompted their citizens to try to migrate to the United States.
Migrants, cities and towns: Trump repeated his vow that, if elected, he would liberate every “city and town that has been invaded and conquered” by migrants. This is nonsense; no US town has been conquered by migrants.
Migrants in Springfield, Ohio: Trump falsely claimed: “You take a look at Springfield, Ohio, think of this – where, think of this, where 30,000 illegal migrants were put into a town of 50,000 people.”
This is false in more than one way. While we don’t know the immigration status of each and every Haitian immigrant in Springfield, the community is, on the whole, in the country lawfully. The Springfield city website says, “YES, Haitian immigrants are here legally, under the Immigration Parole Program. Once here, immigrants are then eligible to apply for Temporary Protected Status (TPS).” Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine wrote in a New York Times op-ed about Springfield in September that the Haitian immigrants “are there legally” and that, as a Trump-Vance supporter, he is “saddened” by the candidates’ disparagement of “the legal migrants living in Springfield.”
And while there is no official tally of the number of immigrants in Springfield, Trump’s “30,000” figure exceeds local estimates. The website for the city of Springfield says there are an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 immigrants in the county that includes Springfield, where the total population is about 138,000. Chris Cook, the county’s health commissioner, said in July that his team estimated the best number was 10,000 to 12,000 Haitian residents in the county.
“Missing” migrant children: Trump repeated his regular false claim that, because of Harris, “325,000 children are missing, dead, sex slaves or slaves. They came through the open border and they’re gone. Their parents will most likely never see them again, almost any of them.”
Trump was wildly distorting federal statistics.
He appeared to be referring to an August report from the Homeland Security Department’s Office of Inspector General, which said ICE reported more than 32,000 unaccompanied migrant children failed to appear as scheduled for immigration court hearings after being released or transferred out of custody between fiscal years 2019 and 2023 – a period that, notably, includes two years and four months under the Trump administration. The report also said that 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children during this period were not given notices to appear in court.
The report said that ICE has “no assurances” these children “are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor.” But it did not definitively assert that any of them were being exploited – let alone that almost all of them have vanished for good.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told CNN in a message this summer: “Long story short, no, there are not 320,000 kids missing. 32,000 kids missed court. That doesn’t mean they’re missing, it means they missed court (either because their sponsor didn’t bring them or they are teenagers who didn’t want to show up). The remaining 291,000 cases mentioned by the OIG are cases where ICE hasn’t filed the paperwork to start their immigration court cases.”
Trump’s rally crowd in Butler, Pennsylvania: Trump repeated his wild exaggeration that there were “101,000 people” at the campaign rally he held earlier this month at the same Pennsylvania site where a gunman tried to kill him in July. CNN affiliate KDKA in Pittsburgh reported that the Secret Service put the crowd at 24,000 people, while the Trump-supporting sheriff of Blair County, Pennsylvania, James Ott, said in his speech at the rally itself (more than three hours before Trump took the stage) that he was looking out at “21,000-plus people.”
Trump and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline: Trump repeated his false claim that he “ended” the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, adding, “It was dead.” Trump did not kill the pipeline. He signed sanctions related to the project into law about three years into his presidency, when the pipeline was already about 90% complete, and the state-owned Russian company behind the project announced in December 2020 that construction was resuming.
Trump and the defeat of ISIS: Trump repeated his false claim that “it took us like four weeks” to defeat the ISIS terror group even though generals had told him it would take five years. The ISIS “caliphate” was declared fully liberated more than two years into Trump’s presidency.
Trump and inflation: Trump falsely claimed that, when he was president, “we had no inflation.” Cumulative inflation during Trump’s presidency was about 8%.
Harris and inflation: Trump falsely claimed that Harris’ votes to break legislative ties in the US Senate “caused the worst inflation in the history of our country.” Aside from the claim about Harris’ role, it’s not true the US has had its worst inflation ever during the Biden administration; Trump could fairly say that the US inflation rate hit a 40-year high in June 2022, when it was 9.1%, but that was not close to the all-time record of 23.7%, set in 1920. (And the rate has since plummeted. The most recent available inflation rate at the time Trump spoke here was 2.4% in September.)
Harris and law enforcement: Trump touted his endorsements from police officers and law enforcement organizations, then falsely said of Harris: “I don’t think they have one cop. They’re looking for just one cop.” In early September, 101 current and former law enforcement officials, including active sheriffs, police chiefs and other senior officers, released a letter endorsing Harris. A Michigan sheriff gave a televised speech endorsing Harris at the Democratic National Convention in August, as did a former Capitol Police officer who was injured when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Trump’s border wall: The former president repeated his false claim that he “built 571 miles of wall” on the southern border. That’s a significant exaggeration; official government data shows 458 miles were built under Trump — including both wall built where no barriers had existed before and wall built to replace previous barriers.
Trump and the military: The former president repeated his false claim that “I rebuilt our military, in total — rebuilt all of our military.”
Trump has previously made clear that he is claiming to have replaced all of the military’s equipment. “This claim is not even close to being true. The military has tens of thousands of pieces of equipment, and the vast majority of it predates the Trump administration,” Todd Harrison, an expert on the defense budget and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, told CNN in November 2023, after Trump made a version of the claim.
Harrison said in an email at the time: “Moreover, the process of acquiring new equipment for the military is slow and takes many years. It’s not remotely possible to replace even half of the military’s inventory of equipment in one presidential term. I just ran the numbers for military aircraft, and about 88% of the aircraft in the U.S. military inventory today (including Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine Corps aircraft) were built before Trump took office. In terms of fighters in particular, we still have F-16s and F- 15s in the Air Force that are over 40 years old.”
The 2020 election: Trump repeated his false claim that his opponents “used Covid to cheat” in the 2020 election. There is no basis for the claim that the Democrats cheated; many states, including states with Republican election chiefs and Republican governors, modified their election procedures because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
This story has been updated with additional information.
Fact check: 32 false claims Trump made to Joe Rogan
Daniel Dale, CNN – October 27, 2024
Donald Trump sat down Friday with prominent podcast host Joe Rogan for a conversational interview that ran for nearly three hours — and the former president delivered his standard bombardment of false claims, at least 32 in all.
Many of those false claims are lies that were debunked months or even years ago. The claims spanned a variety of topics, including immigration policy, environmental and energy policy, the legitimacy of the 2020 election, Trump’s record in office, Vice President Kamala Harris, crowd sizes, and how schools deal with transgender children.
Here is a fact check of 32 false claims Trump made to Rogan. This is not intended as a complete list of the inaccurate statements Trump uttered in the interview; with just over a week to go until Election Day, we were unable to look into every dubious assertion he made.
Immigration
Migrants and murderers: Trump repeated his frequent false claim that “we had 13,099 murderers dropped in our country over the last three years.” In reality, as the Department of Homeland Security and independent experts have noted, that official figure is about immigrants with homicide convictions in the US today who entered the country over decades, including during Trump’s own administration, not over the past three years or under the Biden administration. You can read more here.
Trump’s border wall: The former president falsely claimed, “You know, I built 570 miles of wall.” That’s a significant exaggeration; official government data shows 458 miles were built under Trump — including both wall built where no barriers had existed before and wall built to replace previous barriers.
Harris’ border role: Trump repeated a regular false claim about Harris: “She was in charge of the border.” She was not and is not; Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is the Biden administration official in charge of border security. In reality, President Joe Biden gave Harris a more limited immigration-related assignment in 2021, asking her to lead diplomacy with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in an attempt to address the conditions that prompted their citizens to try to migrate to the United States.
The number of migrants: Trump claimed that at least “21 million” people have illegally crossed the border during the Biden administration. Through September, the country had recorded under 11 million nationwide “encounters” with migrants during the Biden administration, including millions who were rapidly expelled from the country; even adding in so-called gotaways who evaded detection, estimated by House Republicans as being roughly 2 million, there’s no way the total is “21 million.”
Elections, campaigns and crowds
The outcome of the 2020 election: Trump repeated his lie that he won the 2020 election, falsely claiming, “I won that second election so easy.” He lost, fair and square, to Biden, who beat Trump 306-232 in the Electoral College and earned over 7 million more votes than Trump.
The legitimacy of the 2020 election: Trump made various specific false assertions about the 2020 election, claiming it was “crooked”; that his opponents cheated using the guise of the Covid-19 pandemic; and, vaguely, that it was marred by “old-fashioned ballot-screwing.” All of this is baseless.
Polling in 2016: Trump told a story about how, he said, a Washington Post/ABC News poll of Wisconsin during his 2016 race against Hillary Clinton showed him “down 17 points the day before the election,” but he knew it was wrong because of the size of his crowds, and he ended up winning the state: “I was down 17 points in Wisconsin and I won; it’s crooked stuff.” This story is false; the poll showing him down 17 the week of the election came during his 2020 race against Biden, and he lost Wisconsin that year — though by less than one percentage point.
The 2020 election and Wisconsin: Trump falsely claimed, “If you take a look at Wisconsin, they virtually admitted that the election was rigged, robbed and stolen.” This did not happen, “virtually” or otherwise; while some Wisconsin Republicans certainly support Trump’s claim that the election was rigged and stolen, the state’s elections authorities have not made such assertions — and as PolitiFact previously reported, even Republican-led election reviews did not find that Trump won the state.
An election ruling in Virginia: Trump falsely claimed that, just before he walked in for the Friday interview, there was a ruling in a legal “case where they found thousands of illegal ballots.” This case did not involve “illegal ballots”; rather, a judge ruled that Virginia had purged voter registrations from its rolls too close to Election Day. You can read more here.
Grocery stores and identification: Calling for strict voter identification laws, Trump spoke of how identification is required in other circumstances, saying, “When you go to a grocery store, you give ID.” This was a little vaguer than his previous declarations that “you need” ID to buy groceries, but it’s nonsense nonetheless; few grocery shoppers are required to provide identification unless they are paying by check or buying alcohol, tobacco or certain medications.
A Carter commission and mail-in ballots: Trump repeated his false claim that a commission led by former President Jimmy Carter published a report whose “primary finding was you cannot have mail-in ballots.” Trump added, “The one thing with Jimmy Carter: He had a very strong commission. It was, no mail-in ballots.”
Though the commission Carter co-chaired was generally skeptical of mail-in ballots, calling absentee voting “the largest source of potential voter fraud,” it did not say, “You cannot have mail-in ballots,” as Trump claimed. In fact, its report highlighted an example of successful mail-only elections — noting that Oregon, a state that has been conducting elections by mail-in voting since the late 1990s, “appears to have avoided significant fraud in its vote-by-mail elections by introducing safeguards to protect ballot integrity, including signature verification.”
The report also offered some recommendations for making the use of mail-in ballots more secure and called for “further research on the pros and cons” of voting by mail (as well as early voting).
Trump’s Las Vegas crowd size: In his latest exaggeration about crowd sizes, Trump claimed there were “29,000 people” at his event the night prior. His rally Thursday night, in Las Vegas, was at an arena with a capacity under 19,000.
Trump’s McDonald’s crowd size: Trump falsely claimed that there were “28,000 people sitting around” the McDonald’s in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he held a publicity event last weekend in which he briefly performed some of the duties of an employee (the restaurant was closed to the public). This is fiction; while videos show there was a substantial pro-Trump crowd gathered in the vicinity of the restaurant, it is obvious that it didn’t approach 28,000. A local journalist on the scene, Tom Sofield, the publisher of Bucks County news outlets, wrote on social media Tuesday: “There were several thousand excited supporters nearby, but the figure wasn’t 25,000, as stated by the former president later.”
Harris’ schedule: Trump, criticizing Harris’ work ethic, falsely claimed she “took off yesterday” and “took off the day before,” and also that “she’s going to take off tomorrow or the next day.” Trump is entitled to argue that Harris isn’t campaigning hard, but she was not “off” or scheduled to be off any of these days. On Wednesday, she participated in a CNN town hall in Pennsylvania; on Thursday, she held a rally in Georgia; on Friday, she held a rally in Texas; on Saturday, she held a rally in Michigan; on Sunday, she is scheduled to make a series of campaign stops in Philadelphia.
Foreign policy
Trump and ISIS: Repeating one of his regular false claims, Trump said, “We defeated ISIS in record time. It was supposed to take years, and we did it in a matter of weeks.” The ISIS “caliphate” was declared fully liberated more than two years into Trump’s presidency.
Obama and Kim Jong Un: Trump, touting his relationship with Kim Jong Un, revived his old false claim that the North Korean leader refused to meet with Barack Obama when the then-president sought a meeting: “They wouldn’t meet Obama. He (Obama) tried to meet. They wouldn’t even talk to him about it.”
There is no evidence that Obama ever sought a meeting with Kim. Independent experts on North Korea and former Obama officials told CNN in 2019 that the claim is fictional.
Who pays tariffs: Trump repeated his frequent false claim that, through tariffs, “I took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China.” US importers make the tariff payments, not China, and study after study has found that Americans bore the overwhelming majority of the cost of Trump’s tariffs on China.
Previous presidents and tariffs on China: Trump repeated his frequent false claim that no previous president had imposed tariffs on Chinese imports, saying, “Nobody took in 10 cents, not one other president.” The US was actually generating billions per year in revenue from tariffs on Chinese imports before Trump took office; in fact, the US has had tariffs on Chinese imports since 1789. Trump’s predecessor, Obama, imposed additional tariffs on Chinese goods.
China and Taiwan: Trump repeated an exaggeration about China: “The day I left, they flew 28 bombers over the middle of Taiwan — 28 bombers.”
Trump was wrong about key details of this incident. On the third and fourth days of the Biden presidency, not the day Trump left office, China sent military planes into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone over the Taiwan Strait — not “over the middle of Taiwan,” a major difference. Also, the incident involved 28 Chinese planes but not “28 bombers.” The New York Times reported at the time that the Taiwanese military said eight Chinese bombers were involved; the other planes were fighters, anti-submarine aircraft and a reconnaissance plane.
And it’s worth noting that China also sent planes into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone during Trump’s presidency. In early 2021, Taiwan News reported that, according to a recent report funded by Taiwan’s government, “In 2020, the Chinese military violated Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) more times than in any year since 1996.”
Environment and energy
Global warming and sea level rise: Trump repeated a regular false claim minimizing the threat of climate change: “I watch these poor fools talking about, ‘Our oceans will rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 500 years.’” The global average sea level is rising more per year than Trump claimed that unnamed concerned people say it will rise over 500 years; NASA reported in March that the global average sea-level rise in 2023 was 0.17 inches per year, more than double the rate in 1993.
Electric vehicle charging stations: Trump falsely claimed that the Biden administration spent $9 billion on just eight electric vehicle charging stations: “They built the charger stations, right, in the Midwest. They built eight of them. They cost $9 billion.”
As FactCheck.org and others have noted, Trump was distorting news articles about the slow pace at which $7.5 billion in federal funds allocated for electric charging have been spent. The articles reported that, as of March, only eight charging stations had been built under the program (not all in the Midwest). The articles did not say that these stations had themselves cost the entire $7.5 billion, let alone $9 billion.
The number of charging stations built with this federal funding has increased since March. The Federal Highway Administration told USA Today that, as of October 11, 20 stations had been built with the money, with plans underway for more than 800 additional stations.
California and electricity: Trump, reviving his false claim about the stability of the electric system in California, said, “They want to go to all electric cars, but they have brownouts every weekend.” California does not have “brownouts every weekend.” A spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom told CNN in late August that the state had not had any outages because of electricity demand since 2020, and a spokesperson for the entity that manages the power grid for about 80% of the state said the same.
A LNG plant in Louisiana: Trump revived a false claim he repeatedlymade during his presidency, claiming that he “instantly” secured a key environmental permit to allow for the construction of a massive liquefied natural gas facility in Louisiana after the initiative had been on hold “for 14 years.” In fact, this facility was granted its key permits under the Obama administration, and its construction also began under Obama.
“To quote our friends at PolitiFact, what Trump said in this case qualifies as ‘pants on fire,’” Pavel Molchanov, an energy analyst at Raymond James & Associates, said last year after Trump made the same claim. Molchanov said, “No one was ready to start drilling there, in 2017 or at any other point in time.”
There is no drilling infrastructure in place in the refuge; major oil companies have shown little interest in the site; and the seven leases the Biden administration eventually canceled were all held by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, a state entity that is not an oil company.
Trump’s record and history
Trump’s response to “lock her up” chants: Trump repeated his false claim that he “never said” the words “lock her up” when his supporters chanted that refrain about his 2016 Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. He added, “I’d always go, ‘Take it easy. Just relax.’” In fact, Trump repeatedly said the words “lock her up” in both 2016 and 2020, and he also repeatedly called for Clinton’s imprisonment using other language.
Trump and Oprah: Trump repeated a false claim he has been making for at least 11 years, saying he appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s popular television program during “one of her last shows” in “that final week.” In fact, Trump appeared about three and a half months before Winfrey’s show concluded, not during its star-studded final week.
Trump’s tax cuts: Repeating another regular false claim, the former president claimed that he signed the “biggest tax cuts in history.” Independent analyses have found that his tax-cut law was not the biggest in history, either in percentage of gross domestic product or in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Supreme Court appointments: Trump touted the fact that he appointed three Supreme Court justices, then said, “Most people get none,” adding that “even if a president is in there for eight years, oftentimes they never have a chance.” This is false; no president who served for eight years did not get a chance to appoint a single Supreme Court justice. Only four presidents didn’t get a chance to appoint one justice to the Supreme Court, as PolitiFact previously reported, and three of them served for less than a full four-year term, while the other, Carter, served for four years.
Trump’s uncle and MIT: Trump repeated a false claim that his uncle John Trump, whom he has repeatedly invoked as evidence of the smarts of his family, was the “longest-serving” professor in the history of the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology. John Trump was one of the longest-serving professors at MIT, but not the very longest; the school told Newsweek early this year that at least 10 other people were on the faculty for longer.
Miscellaneous
Schools and transgender children: Trump repeated his false claim that schools are sending children for gender-affirming surgeries without parental consent: “Who would want to have — there’s so many — the transgender operations: Where they’re allowed to take your child when he goes to school and turn him into a male — to a female — without parental consent.”
There is no evidence that schools in any part of the United States have sent children for gender-affirming surgeries without their parents’ approval, or performed unapproved such surgeries on-site; none of that is “allowed” anywhere in the country. Even in the states where gender-affirming surgery is legal for people under age 18, parental consent is required before a minor can undergo such a procedure.
Trump’s own campaign has not been able to find a single example of this ever having happened anywhere in the United States. You can read more here.
Alyssa Farah Griffin: Trump told a thoroughly false story about a former official in his administration, Alyssa Farah Griffin, who is now a co-host of the ABC talk show “The View” and a political commentator on CNN. Trump claimed Griffin worked in the administration as “like an assistant press secretary”; that, upon leaving the administration, she “writes me this gorgeous letter,” “the most beautiful letter,” declaring “he was the greatest president”; but then, upon joining “The View,” that she suddenly started “hitting the hell out of me” with criticism.
This is untrue in several ways.
Griffin had the top-tier role of White House communications director and assistant to the president upon her resignation in late 2020, not “assistant press secretary” (she had previously been Pentagon press secretary and Vice President Mike Pence’s press secretary).
Griffin did issue a statement upon her resignation saying, “It’s been the honor of a lifetime to serve in the Trump administration over the last three and a half years,” but did not say that Trump was “the greatest president.” She said Saturday that she has never written Trump a private letter.
And she began sharply criticizing Trump shortly after the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, not when she started guest-hosting “The View” in October 2021 or when she was named a permanent co-host in August 2022.
Abraham Lincoln’s sons: Trump told a story about how President Abraham Lincoln was a “very depressed” person in part because he lost his son “whose name was Tad.” Trump repeated later in the story that Lincoln lost his son “Tad.” In fact, Tad Lincoln outlived Abraham Lincoln by six years; the son Abraham Lincoln lost in 1862 was Willie. (This appeared to be an inadvertent mistake by Trump, but his claim was still inaccurate, and Trump has repeatedly bashed Biden over such mix-ups.)
That wasn’t the only prominent Rogan-Trump tie-up this weekend. On Sunday, Trump’s New York City rally at Madison Square Garden featured a set from comedian Tony Hinchcliffe — a prominent member of the Roganverse.
Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe is part of Joe Rogan’s universe. He performed at Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden in New York.ANGELA WEISS / AFP
But back to Rogan and Hinchcliffe. How, exactly, are they connected?
You can read all about it in this excellent Bloomberg story from this summer, which explains how Rogan moved from Los Angeles to Austin in 2020 and created an influential comedy hub there.
Hinchcliffe was one of several comedians who followed Rogan there and has since seen his career take off — “Exhibit A of the Rogan flywheel,” as Bloomberg’s Felix Gillette and Ashley Carman put it. Hinchcliffe hosts his weekly “Kill Tony” show at the comedy club Rogan opened in Austin, and his show features a variety of comics Rogan and his fans love, as well as a cast of aspiring comics who are in Austin specifically because Rogan is there.
All of this has helped Hinchcliffe become so big that this wasn’t the first time this year he’s told jokes at Madison Square Garden — he headlined two nights at the famous arena in August.
But back to you, the person who had never heard of Hinchcliffe until Sunday. Maybe you’re one of many people Googling him on Monday.
The main thing you need to know about Hinchcliffe is simply this: He’s both very popular and under-the-radar. Which is something you can still say about Rogan himself: He has so much reach he can launch new stars like Hinchcliffe. But if you’re not tuned to his frequency you might never hear or see him yourself.
But what is not laughable is the accompanying photo of Trump supporters. Their right arms are raised, reminiscent of the Nazi salute. Heads bowed, eyes closed, they are praying for a convicted felon, an adjudicated sexual abuser, a man who incited an insurrection to stay in power.
Someone who mishandled a pandemic resulting in an estimated 200,000 unnecessary deaths. Someone who embraces our adversaries and alienates our allies. His lies are harmful and dangerous, most recently about migrants eating pets and federal disaster workers who are providing emergency assistance after devastating hurricanes.
Is this what blind faith looks like?
D.H. Sloan, Los Angeles
..
To the editor: As a Black man for Trump, I reject the headline of this article. It suggests Trump is using a racist description of Harris when he calls her lazy.
That’s The Times’ interpretation of his remark, not the meaning he intended. The Times should stick to reporting facts and leave interpretation of them to the reader.
Robert S. Rodgers, Culver City
..
To the editor: The prayer salute looks disconcertingly like the salute we used when we said, “I pledge allegiance to the flag,” and which was dropped when I was in grade school during World War II because it looked too much like the Nazi salute.
I don’t think even now Jesus would like to be saluted.
Bad Bunny shows support for Harris after comedian makes offensive comment about Puerto Rico at Trump rally
Priscilla Alvarez, CNN – October 27, 2024
Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny attends the Academy Awards in Los Angeles on March 10, 2024.
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what’s in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.Generate Key Takeaways
Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny signaled support for Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday, sharing a clip on social media of the vice president’s plans for the island moments after a speaker made an offensive joke at Donald Trump’s New York rally, sparking outrage.
The move comes as both the Harris and Trump campaigns have been vying for the Puerto Rican vote, especially in battleground Pennsylvania, where about 500,000 Puerto Ricans live. Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, known as Bad Bunny, shared the campaign clip to his more than 45 million followers on Instagram.
“I will never forget what Donald Trump did and what he did not do when Puerto Rico needed a caring and a competent leader,” Harris says in the video, which Bad Bunny reshared multiple times with a focus on Trump. “He abandoned the island, tried to block aid after back-to-back devastating hurricanes and offered nothing more than paper towels and insults.”
Thousands of people in Puerto Rico died as a result of Hurricane Maria in 2017 — shortly after Hurricane Irma caused mass power outages throughout the island. While surveying damage in Puerto Rica after Hurricane Maria, then-President Trump drew backlash after tossing supplies, including paper towels, to residents of the island.
Bad Bunny’s post Sunday was the first indication of support from the artist as the Harris campaign tries to shore up celebrity endorsements. And it came as outrage built over remarks made by Tony Hinchcliffe, a comedian and podcast host, assailing Puerto Rico at Trump’s rally in Madison Square Garden.
“There’s a lot going on, like, I don’t know if you know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yeah. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” he said. Puerto Rico is a US territory.
Harris campaign officials had been in conversation with Bad Bunny’s team, according to a source familiar, hoping to have him lend his support to the vice president’s plan for Puerto Rico.
“This has been a thoughtful and deliberate approach focused on the issues,” the source said.
A representative for Bad Bunny told CNN that his repost of Harris’ video on Instagram was “not an endorsement,” but that he is “supporting” Harris. “Benito’s political focus has always been on Puerto Rico,” his representative told CNN. His representative did not indicate whether a formal endorsement would be coming from the musician ahead of the election.
An endorsement from Bad Bunny has been at the top of the Harris campaign’s wish list of celebrity endorsements for months, according to a source familiar with the campaign’s Hollywood outreach. The campaign understands the large reach Bad Bunny has within the Latino community and believes his support could help sway young male Latino voters – a demographic that has gravitated toward Trump.
The campaign also celebrated Bad Bunny, along with Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin, sharing the vice president’s message on social media.
“Despacito” singer Luis Fonsi also joined the chorus of Puerto Rican stars sharing their support for Harris, posting a video clip of Hinchcliffe’s joke at the Trump rally with the caption, “Are you serious?” to his 16 million Instagram followers.
“It’s ok to have different views, and I respect those who think different than me…but going down this racist path ain’t it,” Fonsi posted on his Instagram story, along with emojis that signaled he is voting for Harris.
Earlier Sunday, Harris visited Freddy & Tony’s Restaurant, a Puerto Rican restaurant in north Philadelphia, where she spoke to Puerto Rico’s challenges and discussed her policies focused on the island.
“I’m going to create an opportunity economy task force for Puerto Rico,” she said, adding that she wants to focus on two things: building economic opportunity for the island and improving the electrical grid.
This story has been updated with additional information.
CNN’s Elizabeth Wagmeister and Max Rego contributed to this report.
