"This week, the notion of Trump as the leader of a distinctively white movement became harder to defend...."

"Although exit-poll data can be unreliable... [his coalition is] unusually nonwhite.... For instance, Trump became the first Republican in more than a century to win Starr County, along the Mexican border in Texas, which is almost entirely Hispanic; he did similarly well throughout the state’s majority-Hispanic border counties.... Late in the campaign, during a Trump rally at Madison Square Garden, one of his opening acts, the antagonistic comedian Tony Hinchcliffe... made a joke about Puerto Rico being a 'floating island of garbage,' which for a time became the campaign’s top story.... But... Osceola, a majority-Hispanic county in Florida with a large Puerto Rican population, swung from a fourteen-point Biden victory in 2020 to a narrow Trump victory this year.... [P]erhaps Trump’s coalition will help Americans rethink the assumption that 'white' and 'Hispanic' are mutually exclusive categories, and will boost a new version of the old white identity. But, as far as we can tell, Trump’s America is a place that is more polarized by education than it used to be and less polarized by whiteness and non-whiteness—by race, broadly understood...."

I'm reading "How Donald Trump, the Leader of White Grievance, Gained Among Hispanic Voters/In 2016, the idea that Trump was a cloaked white supremacist made him seem like a fringe character. What does it mean that his popularity has increased?" by Kelefa Sanneh, in The New Yorker.

I don't know how much postmortem I'm willing to read. If your perception and analysis are so good, why didn't you see this before the election? I guess that's another way of saying hindsight is 20/20. But I chose this little essay to quote because it's not purporting to understand what happened and it is pretty modestly conceding confusion. That's appropriate. I would like to see much stronger criticism of Democrats. They were boosted by mainstream media, which either pretended not to notice how awful they were or just didn't see.

By the way, is "antagonistic comedian" a standard term? I've heard "insult comedian."

Anyway, to escape from elite media for a moment — I mean for 3 hours — I listened to Joe Rogan and Dave Smith talking about Tony Hinchcliffe (go to 00:04:00):

Elite media reacts to Trump's MSG extravaganza by zeroing in on Tony Hinchcliffe (Kill Tony).

I never take the bait anymore when headlines say things like...

• "As Trump courts their vote, comedian at his rally makes racist jokes about Latinos and Puerto Rico Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made crude jokes about Latinos having babies and called Puerto Rico a 'floating island of garbage,' drawing a rebuke from several Republicans" (NBC News) 

• "Trump’s New York homecoming sparks backlash over racist and vulgar remarks/A pro-Trump comedian’s racist diatribe drew widespread condemnation" (Politico)

• "Anti-Puerto Rico comments at Trump rally spur outrage as Bad Bunny supports Harris/The artist’s gesture of support came as a number of speakers at a Trump event in New York made racist and disparaging comments about Puerto Ricans and other Latinos" (WaPo) 

• "A Trump Rally Speaker Trashed Puerto Ricans. Harris Reached Out to Them. Her campaign moved swiftly to highlight that even as a speaker at Donald Trump’s rally in New York made offensive remarks about Puerto Rico and Latinos, she was visiting Puerto Rican voters in Philadelphia" (NYT)

I started watching the rally at 4 Central Time — when I put up a post — so I hadn't seen the Hinchcliffe routine in real time. My first instinct was to watch the entire 12 minutes of his routine. Here. You can use the Althouse method of determining what somebody said. Listen to him, in context:

It seems to me that Hinchcliffe made some deliberately offensive jokes:

• "There's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yeah. I think it's called Puerto Rico."

• "I think that Travis Kelce might be the next OJ Simpson."

• Purporting to see a black friend in the audience: "He had a Halloween party last night. We had fun. We carved watermelons together."

• "Wars. It is unbelievable what's happening right now. It is incredible. Ukraine versus Russia. Israel/Palestine. It's like bad soccer games. Who even cares?"

It was as though he was challenging the crowd to guffaw and give Trump opponents the opportunity to accuse them of racism or whatever. He just went ahead and told those jokes.

He had 2 defenses ready to insert where needed. One was the conventional comedian's ploy of openly talking about how his jokes are failing. The crowd is tough. Or: This is the wrong crowd for this kind of material (which ought to absolve the Trumpers of agreeing with whatever racism inheres in those jokes (but won't)).

The other defense is to follow the offense with a sharp shift to a declaration about the importance of freedom of speech. This is the old Lenny Bruce move that takes risks. It was very hip and cool when Lenny Bruce did it, but it's hard to bring the whole world along with you if you try that. Ask Michael Richards. And Lenny Bruce paid for it in his own time. 

It isn't really fair to deploy this comedic approach at somebody else's event, especially when it's really important and you know that person has antagonists who are standing by waiting to pounce on any material they can use to call him a racist. But maybe Trump wanted this kind of attention-getting edginess. Hinchcliffe has his fans. I bet Barron Trump is one of them. I've heard Trump say, more than once, that he takes advice from Barron about which comedians young people love.

Hinchcliffe had another comic move. With a foundation of failed jokes before the tough crowd, he was in position to comment when the crowd finally, genuinely responded with real spontaneous laughter at one of them. Here's that joke:

"It feels good in here. The other side's got a lot of crazy endorsements. Swift, Eminem, Leo DiCaprio, Beyonce. Every day the Democratic party looks more and more like a P Diddy party."

He said: "Oh oh okay okay — that's what you guys want all right. Heck yeah...."