Two hours before Donald Trump was set to take the stage at Madison Square Garden in New York City, right-wing comedian Tony Hinchcliffe warmed up the crowd with a shockingly racist performance.
“Where are my proud Latinos at tonight?” Hinchcliffe asked the packed arena, eliciting scattered loud cheers. “You guys see what I mean? [The border’s] wide open. There’s so many of them.”
“These Latinos, they love making babies, too,” he added. “There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside just like they did to our country.”
The crowd groaned and cheered as Hinchcliffe continued, saying, “Republicans are the party with a good sense of humor.”
I watched the set. Honestly… it was so bad and blatant and distasteful it’s almost like a sabotage job. I’m not saying it’s true, as Hinchcliffe seems like a shitty person in general. BUT. If he was a different comedian, I could almost see this as a really devious way of undermining and exposing the racism of Trump Republicans. Targeting Hispanics multiple times right before an election that’s on a razor’s edge? Specifically targeting Puerto Ricans, who have large representation in Pennsylvania?
It seemed weird that he was specifically unwilling to say he’ll vote for Trump. He implied it and talked around it, but he didn’t say he would. He hid behind the idea that as an entertainer, it would be bad for him. And yet, there’s no way it would be bad for him while literally opening a Trump rally, so it seemed like a weird choice that really stuck out to me.
For anyone else watching it, didn’t it almost seem like satire? Like he was trying to get them to laugh about awful shit in a way that would make them all look bad? I find it highly unlikely that’s what he intended (though it is what he did), but that refusal to actually say he’s voting for Trump really stuck out to me.
I think you’re giving Tony way too much credit. This is exactly the type of shit he says on his show, it just has a much different impact at a political rally