Column | Trump's hostility to Puerto Rico reemerges at the worst possible time

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

52% : There are more Puerto Ricans in Florida than the 2020 margin in that state, too, despite how handily Trump won.
33% : In four of those states -- Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- the number of residents born in Puerto Rico is larger than the vote margin between Joe Biden and Trump in the 2020 election.
27% : According to Donald Trump's reelection campaign, the comments made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe during the former president's rally at Madison Square Garden are not reflective of how Trump himself feels.
25% : Trump, belatedly worried about appearing indifferent to the damage, repeatedly tried to downplay the death toll.
23% : During one discussion about immigration during his presidency, Trump referred to Caribbean countries near Puerto Rico with a vulgar, disparaging term.
21% : Other speakers, including Trump, offered myriad disparagements of outsiders who were presented as threatening the country.
21% : That doesn't mean he'll lose Florida in 2024, of course; there's no reason to think that all of those voters cast ballots for Trump in 2020 or didn't vote at all, a requirement for assuming that Harris would suddenly gain the equivalent of the entire population.
20% : What makes the efforts to distance Trump from Hinchcliffe's "joke" so difficult is that it fully comports with Trump's attitude toward Puerto Rico when he was president.
20% : Despite the quick emergence of outcry over Hinchcliffe's comment, no one at the rally -- including Trump, who spoke several hours later -- rejected his joke as unacceptable.

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