(RNS) — Amid outrage over racist jokes told at a Donald Trump campaign event in New York City on Sunday (Oct. 27), some Hispanic Christian leaders and scholars are raising questions about the Republican candidate’s standing with a crucial ethnic and religious demographic a week before Election Day.
Tony Hinchcliffe, a standup comedian, opened Sunday’s event at Madison Square Garden with a set that referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage” and made disparaging comments about immigrants and Latinos.
“These Latinos, they love making babies, too,” said Hinchcliffe, who then added a lewd remark.
The Trump campaign officials immediately tried to distance the campaign from Hinchcliffe’s “floating island of garbage” remark. Trump campaign Senior Adviser Danielle Alvarez told RNS that the joke “does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”
The Rev. Gabriel Salguero. Photo courtesy The Gathering)
The Rev. Gabriel Salguero, who heads the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, said his phone began buzzing with texts and phone calls as soon as footage of Hinchcliffe’s comments began circulating on social media on Sunday.
“I was on the phone for hours after that,” said Salguero, a Floridian whose family is part of the Puerto Rican diaspora. “Our community is deeply offended. We don’t endorse candidates, but we do endorse decency.”
Salguero said that while members of his faith community are not a monolith and many will likely still vote for Trump, “It certainly did not help him.”
Salguero sent a separate statement in which NaLEC decried the “deeply xenophobic and lewd rhetoric made by a comedian targeting Latinos and other communities at the rally in Madison Square Garden last night.
“We firmly believe that racialized attacks should have no place in political campaigns and are contrary to the Gospel we proclaim,” the statement read.
The NaLEC statement included more of Salguero’s personal …