Tony Hinchcliffe: Backlash after comedian at Trump rally calls Puerto Rico 'island of garbage'

It sure did, Maria. That's why he was invited by the RNC
- Yeah, when your party's candidate for president, a former president, has this group of fascists on stage with him, and doesn't make a peep about it, it most definitely reflects GOP values.
  
  If nine people are sitting at a table, and a Nazi sits down with them, and nobody gets up, there are now 10 Nazis at that table.
- The GOP continues to feel shocked by the views of their peers and then do nothing about it.
  Weak.

Gay men vouching for the GOP always amazes me.
- It has a Jews for Hitler vibe.
  
  1-800-KARS-4-NAZIS
- Someone finally said it! I don't think most people know who this guy is. Was shocked to see him supporting Trump, even if he is an ass.
  
  I'm sure the attention will boost his career, even if it's negative. I've never heard of him before this.
  
  I wasn't super shocked to see him perform at a Trump rally. We watch KT every now and then, my husbo more. He ruins his own show and I've stopped paying attention except to see if someone really funny comes up in the bucket pulls. It seemed pretty on-brand for him.
- Useful idiot. They don't know they are not actually part of the cool kids club. When the old white men sit in the parlor discussing things..the door is closed and they laugh at these goobers. They may not come for them first..but they are on the list regardless of how much groveling they did.
- Follow the money.

Had he made these jokes anywhere else - like on stage at a dive bar, like normal - I wouldn't care. But he did this set at a MAGA rally. Whether or not he was "just joking" is completely irrelevant. If I teleport back to 1933, speak at a Hitler rally and make jokes about Jews liking money, it doesn't matter what my heart contains or if I have Jewish friends or enjoy Jewish cuisine or if I don't have an anti-Semitic bone in my body. This is a package deal, not an individual comic's shitty set.
Either Tony is a genuine scumbag racist MAGA cunt, or he's just a stupid, thoughtless, imbecilic cretin who hasn't got the willpower to turn down a stage of this magnitude regardless of the ramifications. Maybe a little of both. In either case, he's a tedious tone-deaf dickhead.
- Same feeling I've been having.
- I would still care if he said this in a club. It's not even funny, it's just racist. If it was funny we'd laugh but it's just lazy and offensive
- He’s always been a cretin so whatever else is on top of that. Cretin is his foundation.

You know... Part of me would totally believe that nobody even vetted him before booking or even asked to review the show he was going to do the night of the rally. Especially with the knowledge that some moron on his team booked the Four Seasons years ago without realizing that it was a landscaping company.
The rest of me knows these people are all pieces of shit and don't care.
- Nah. Some nazi fuck heard his act and told Gröpenführer he's perfect for an opening act.
  
  Gröpenführer
  I'm dead. R.I.P. me.
- His routine was loaded into the teleprompter. It was explicitly approved.
- They did realize they weren't actually booking the Four Seasons.
  But they had publicly announced a rally at the Four Seasons before actually bothering to book.
  And when they were turned down by the hotel, they scrambled to find a location with the same name to hide that fact.
  
  It reflected how drumps government operated. Announced it then tried to work out how to do it.
- I always assumed they planned to be at the hotel but didn’t book in advance of announcing and got denied permission. But maybe what you’re suggesting is what happened?

I've followed politics for twenty years, this absoltuly reflects GOP values.

- I'm so glad other people are on the Fuck Tony Hinchcliffe. I've been like that for years.
  His whole shtick has been to make shit jokes and then whine, "Why are you so sensitive you can't even take a joke?" He's like discount Jeselnik.
  Not exactly sure why his podcast gets so much attention. And I'm glad he's getting national recognition for being a total shitbag.
  
  Well this has more than likely gotten him a lot of new Trump fans too. Any publicity is good publicity.

Someone needs to remind her that the GOP died when MAGA took over. I think the history books will show this period as the change from GOP to MAGA...
What a "wonderful" time to be alive... :/
- Living through this, I sometimes forget that there will be a historical view. Would the "Tea Party movement" be considered the proto-MAGA?
  
  Absolutely. We can thank the fucking Koch brothers for that nonsense... That shit got way out of control. :/

Calling him a comedian is being overly generous.
- Tony made a career out of inviting amateur comedians to the stage to make fun of them. He also made a career out of deciphering the ever changing flavor of Joe Rogan's penis.
- He's garbage.

She said on X that it did not "reflect the GOP values", referring to the Republican Party, and noted thousands of Puerto Ricans served in the military.
They're not garbage because they served?
- From "The 14 Characteristics of Facism";
  4: Supremacy of the Military
  \ Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
  
  As a Canadian who has been to America on and off for decades this long predates Trump. Y'all have an unhealthy obsession with the military. You always have. To paraphrase Tim Walz, "it's fucking weird"

Of course he pulls the classic "it was just a joke bro".
That said, have dropped out of the comedy world years ago, it pisses me off to see dipshits like this get to perform for thousands while my friends who killed it at the open mics with real comedy are still struggling to get any attention. That's showbiz I guess.
- He said people are taking it out of context but I think context is what's important here. He said it within the context of an official political event by one of the candidates.

When you make a joke "that's actually funny" about us Latinos, we laugh our ass of and love you. We like getting ribbed. But when your "jokes" are just offensive to us and not even funny (the most offensive part), it's not really up to you to decide if your joke was offensive and people have no sense of humor, it's up to the people you're offending.
It wasn't even a joke, it was his views thinly veiled with humor.

Florida has a pile of shit lying in the middle of it, can you guess it's name?
- DeSantis?
  
  I guess there are multiple acceptable answers to that question
- manatees
- I don't know what the fuck my uncle Ron did to you, but you leave him out of this.
- Disneyworld is pretty famous. Who can't guess this?

As Mediaite reported, Hinchcliffe, pointing to a Black man in the audience, "went with what seemed like an off-the-cuff 'joke.'"
“That’s cool," he said, "a Black guy with a thing on his head. What the hell is that, a lamp shade? Look at this guy! Oh, my goodness. Wow! I’m just kidding, that’s one of my buddies. We had a Halloween party last night. We had fun — we carved watermelons together. It was awesome!”
Hyuk hyuk

Elvira surprised the leopards ate her face

I could be wrong, but I think the AP Style guidelines say that the word "comedian" should be in quotes when referring to a GOP "comedian".
Maybe I am wrong, but they should say that.

Bold move to throw that insult in a city with the highest concentration of Puerto Ricans in the country (and also vote Republican).

Madison Square Garden, near the heart of the city, is one of the most famous venues in the world and capable of seating about 20,000. …. New York - viewed by some as a curious choice for the final week of campaigning - is a solid blue state and will not be decisive in the race for the White House.
It’s because it has enough people in its vicinity that support him and could come to fill a 20k person venue. He needed a big rally, but there’s literally nowhere else he can go to do it.

I always saw him more as a host who delivers obvious one-liners for cheap laughs. Tbh I've only seen Kill Tony, no idea if he does actual standup.
- Not really. He used to do standup before his live taping podcasts.
  It was open-mic levels of cringe. He's leeching off the game of his guests and other major comics.

I knew there was a reason i hated Tony Hinchcliff

What a tool. Someone may actually Cancel Tony. He deserves it and it would actually be hilarious.

Media Bias Fact Check | bot support

Why is it that when a more progressive comedian tells a joke that everyone says it's funny and doesn't hurt anyone's feelings, but when a conservative comedian tells a joke that it's racist or sexist or transphobic or deeply unsettling?
Like, I get why it's all those things, but like why is that their version of humor? Like, if someone's a comedian and they vote for republicans (yes, there's already a problem) and then they ask "when is a door not a door?" Are they able to say "when it's ajar"? Will their party abandon them if they do? Or are they just incapable of providing any punchline other than "x group of people are a subhuman species and deserve to die"? Also, what compels their fans to laugh at that?
- You might be interested in this Some More News segment where they try to analyze whether modern conservative comedians are even telling jokes these days. They compare it to what conservative comedy used to be ~20 years ago with the likes of Jeff Foxworthy and talk about how those guys actually were making jokes with actual comedic structure (subjective level of funniness aside).
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSXKzPOcYDU
  
  I actually watched that one and really enjoyed it, but I still don't get the mentality. Like, I love slapstick humor and a good pratfall gets a big laugh out of me, but I've never laughed at someone getting slapped or falling and hurting themselves.
  This is actual hurtful "comedy." How do people enjoy that or think it's okay?
- Why is it that when a more progressive comedian tells a joke that everyone says it’s funny and doesn’t hurt anyone’s feelings, but when a conservative comedian tells a joke that it’s racist or sexist or transphobic or deeply unsettling?
  Nearly exclusively from my observation modern conservative comedians are "punching down". Meaning conservative are usually in a position of power, authority, or inclusion and the conservative joke is belittling those with little to no power, authority, or inclusion. Contrast this with most progressive comedians that are "punching up" where they are calling out the powerful, putting down the authority, casting the included myopic.
  Perhaps a better way to answer your question is to re-frame it:
  "Why is it celebrated when the bullied stand up and punch their bully, but when a bully punches someone they are bullying it is deeply unsettling?"
  The answer is obviously that bullying is wrong.
  
  See, I get that part. I'm still confused why some people cheer for the bully.
- What makes comedy and art in general good is when it torpedoes simple reductive narratives and leaves behind chaotic, nuanced and existential truths.
  I heard someone describe the existentialist humor of their irish friends as being a joke framework where the original context and framing of the joke is utterly obliterated or trivialized by the end of the joke, and I think that is a good lens to diagnose why conservatives are largely incapable of making good comedy.
  Conservativism is the antithesis of existentialism, it attempts through any means necessary to cement specific narratives in the minds of the audience and prevent the framing of those narratives from being examined or questioned.
  Conservative art is just an even lamer version of advertisement, it is simply a narrative being presented for the audience to believe. There is no substance or free spirit to conservative humor that allows the exploration or creation of anything new. All that conservative art does in the realm of symbols and meaning is point at the correct ones and say "we will hurt you if you tell any other story than this".
  The ONLY two things conservative humor is capable of doing by design are punching down at stereotypes for laughs and pretending like saying mean weird thoughts that randomly pop into your head from kneejerk reactions without considering whether it might hurt others or not is edgey rather than a selfish pushback to being told your views are hateful trash.
- Comedy has become an act of airing social grievances (maybe always has been but definitely amplified these days) and thus peoples inherently political social grievances are going to sort them into their respective camps.
  If the problems you’re facing and exposing are “the big man is keeping me down” you’re gonna find solidarity in that message and if your problems are “those people are gross and I don’t like them” only other people who have similar obsession with ordering society into groups of chosen people vs undesirables will respond to your message.
- Modern conservatism is all about setting up in-groups and out-groups, and their humor plays directly into that. Their humor reinforces the stereotypes they want to believe, then when they get called out in it they play the "It's just a joke, brah!" card. But it's not the humor that should trouble us, it's the underlying assumptions that you need to have to see it as funny.
  
  Oh shit, that feels like such a simplified and meaningful response. So it's that in-group/out-group mentality? They aren't laughing because a marginalized group is being threatened, they're laughing when the marginalized group is labeled at subhuman and then described as "garbage," "lazy," or "unintelligent."
  It's like how blonde jokes used to be funny if you accepted that "the blonde" was this unbelievably foolish character. But instead of blonde, you substitute x minority or "non-heteronormative" and instead of something creative such as wishing the friends who just escaped the island were back on the island, you just give them monstrous attributes such as being rapists and criminals?
  I feel like I'm getting really really close to understanding this, I don't see how you get from A to B in this kind of "humor" because B isn't funny and doesn't seem like anyone someone would want to go...