SCOOP: Trump Team Says They Didn’t Vet Offensive Rally Speech From ‘Kill Tony’ Hinchcliffe

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Tony Hinchcliffe speaks at Trump rally

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

The Trump campaign said it did not vet a speech from comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, better known as Kill Tony, at a Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday night that has sparked controversy.

In a speech before the New York City crowd that assembled to see Donald Trump and a slew of speakers in the hours before him, the Austin-based comic made a series of off-color jokes, which included calling Puerto Rico a “floating pile of garbage.”

“I don’t know if you guys know this, but there is literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now,” he said. “I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”

The comment was enough to earn a rebuke from the Trump campaign, which distanced itself from Hinchcliffe on Sunday night. Danielle Alvarez, a senior Trump campaign adviser, said in a statement: “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”

While the dig at Puerto Rico is getting a raft of headlines — and rebukes from Republicans including Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) — Hinchcliffe’s other material leaned into racist stereotypes.

“These Latinos, they love making babies, too. Just know that they do,” Hinchcliffe said, adding a punchline, “There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside, just like they did to our country.” He also joked about one of his Black “buddies” and how they “carved watermelons” together, on top of other jokes using anti-Semitic and anti-Arab tropes.

The set sparked a flurry of criticism from the press, Democrats, and even some conservatives. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez insisted during a Monday morning appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, in which she called the event a “hate rally,” that the Trump campaign must have vetted the speech.

Yet a campaign official told Mediaite: “The entire speech was not vetted.”

It’s not clear what was vetted or approved in Hinchcliffe’s speech, but if he was reading the offensive material from a teleprompter, its safe to assume that someone within the campaign was well aware of what he would be saying.

Anyone familiar with Hinchcliffe’s material would not be surprised by his speech. The “Kill Tony” host’s recent appearance on ESPN’s College Gameday sparked controversy with what Outkick called “vulgar” homophobic jokes about “Lesbian placekickers” and “Brokeback Bob the Builder.” A CNN anchor recently referenced Hinchcliffe as someone known for “racist jokes.”

How the Trump campaign did not expect to have the jokes it did on the stage at Madison Square Garden Sunday night is another question entirely.

UPDATE: Reporting for The Bulwark, Marc Caputo writes that sources within the Trump campaign revealed that an early version of Hinchliffe’s speech included his planned calling of Vice President Kamala Harris the “c-word,” but that part was removed from the prepared remarks. According to his sources, he also reported that some of the more offensive comments were alleged to have been improvised.

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Colby Hall is the Founding Editor of Mediaite.com. He is also a Peabody Award-winning television producer of non-fiction narrative programming as well as a terrific dancer and preparer of grilled meats.