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      The truth about immigration? As Elon Musk shows, borders are always open for the rich | Arwa Mahdawi

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      When is an illegal immigrant not an illegal immigrant? When they’re a privileged white person, of course. In that case the correct classification is “enterprising expat” operating in a “legal grey area”.No prizes for guessing who I’m referencing here. Yep, it’s America’s most irritating immigrant: Elon Musk. Over the years, the South African-born multibillionaire has amplified numerous anti-immigrant conspiracy theories and declared: “We should also not be allowing people in the country if they’re breaking the law.” Which is interesting, because the Washington Post reported on Saturday that Musk almost certainly worked in the US without correct authorisation in 1995 after he dropped out of Stanford to launch a startup called Zip2.This isn’t entirely new news: Kimbal Musk, the billionaire’s younger brother, has been very open about working in the US without proper legal status. During an interview at a conference in 2013, for example, Kimbal bluntly stated that the brothers were “illegal immigrants” when they started Zip2. Elon interjected that it was a “grey area” and the crowd laughed. Breaking the law is very funny when you’re a certain type of person.Musk isn’t the only big name in Maga circles with a dubious work history. According to a 2016 investigation by the Associated Press, Melania Trump (America’s second-most irritating immigrant) was paid for 10 modelling jobs in the US that occurred shortly before she had legal permission to work there. Which hasn’t stopped her husband raging about immigrants “invading” the country.While he might not be in the Magasphere, the Duke of Sussex is another example of how immigration laws are black and white for some people and rather more “grey” for others. In his memoir, Spare, Prince Harry talked openly about taking illegal drugs such as cocaine. Whether he was quite so open about his drug use in his US visa application is another story. If he lied, it may be grounds for deportation. A recent lawsuit from a rightwing think tank attempted to get Harry’s immigration records released but was unsuccessful. We’ll probably never know the truth, but one thing is clear: immigration rules don’t apply to everyone equally. Borders are always open for the rich. Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Trump wants you to believe that the US economy is doing terribly. It’s untrue | Steven Greenhouse

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      If Donald Trump wins next week’s election, it would be the first time in US history that a candidate wins based on such a huge lie – his falsehood that we have “the worst economy ever”. The former president’s big lie has distorted the views of millions of Americans, wrongly convincing many that the US economy is in bad shape.There’s no denying that many Americans are struggling economically and that inflation was painfully high back in 2022, but inflation is far lower now, and most economists agree that our economy is strong. The unemployment rate is low, inflation is way down, economic growth is solid, and job growth has been remarkably strong. Indeed, the country has added nearly 18m jobs – a record – under the Biden-Harris administration. Not only that, median household income has climbed to $80,610, higher than it was in Trump’s last year in office.“In the 35 years I’ve been an economist, I’ve rarely seen an economy performing as well as it is,” Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, said recently. “I’d give it an A+.” But the US public, still upset about the surge in inflation several years ago, sees things very differently: 62% say the economy is in bad shape, while just 38% say it’s in good shape, according to an October AP-NORC poll.The public holds this negative view even though there’s been very good news for blue-collar workers: the US has added more than 700,000 factory jobs under the Biden-Harris administration, far more than during Trump’s presidency, indeed more than under any president since the 1970s. There’s also been good news for small businesses – a record 19m new business applications have been filed under Biden. There’s also good news for the wealthy – the stock market has climbed to record levels, which is Wall Street’s way of saying the economy is in excellent shape. Let’s not forget that Trump warned that if Biden was elected president, the stock market would crash. Wrong again, Donald. Under Biden, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is 36% higher than when Trump left office, and the S&P 500 is 53% higher.Trump’s repeated claim that today’s economy is the worst ever shows either an appalling ignorance of history or an appalling contempt for the truth. The truth is that the economy was in far worse shape during Trump’s last year in office, when the unemployment rate soared to 14.8% during the pandemic, compared with 4.1% now. Moreover, there were many other times when the economy was in worse shape – it was worse during the 2008 recession under George W Bush, far worse during the 1980-81 and 1974-75 recessions, and catastrophically worse during the Great Depression of the 1930s. When Trump tells his Maga crowds that today’s economy is the worst ever, he’s taking everyone for an idiot.The US economy has grown the fastest among major industrial nations since the pandemic began. Our economy has grown twice as fast as Canada’s, three times as fast as France’s and Japan’s, and four times as fast as Britain’s. Under Biden, the average unemployment rate has been lower than under any president since Lyndon Johnson.If Harris loses to Trump, historians and economists will long debate why she lost while Ronald Reagan was re-elected in a landslide in 1984 even though unemployment was far higher back then (7.2% versus 4.1% today), inflation was higher (4% versus 2.4% today), and the Federal Reserve’s interest rates were far higher (10% versus 5% today). One thing working for Reagan was that GDP growth was strong in 1984.Don’t get me wrong, today’s economy has serious problems. Millions of Americans are struggling, but it’s wrong to blame Biden and Harris for that. I’ve been writing about America’s workers and economy for more than 40 years – from Reagan to Clinton to Trump to Biden – and under every president, millions of American have struggled economically. Trump makes believe that far more Americans are struggling now than ever before, but that’s just not true. Take this important statistic: 11.1% of Americans currently fall below the poverty line. That’s essentially the same percentage as under Trump and is only slightly above its lowest point in half a century.Many Americans say the economy is in poor shape mainly because of their lingering dismay about the high inflation from mid-2021 to mid-2023. But they may not know that wages have risen faster than inflation over the past two years and that real wages are higher than before the pandemic. Trump blames Biden and Harris for causing inflation, but they weren’t the cause. The two main causes were the pandemic’s closing factories and disrupting supply chains worldwide and Russia’s war against Ukraine, which increased energy and food prices. Americans complain that gas prices are higher, but that’s Vladimir Putin’s and Opec’s fault, not Biden’s or Harris’s. US oil production has hit record levels.Housing affordability remains a big problem. Not only have housing prices soared, but high interest rates – which are finally coming down – have made it far too difficult for many Americans to buy a house. Again, the housing squeeze is not Biden’s or Harris’s fault; it was caused by a huge slowdown in housing production that began during the 2008 recession.It’s unfortunate that Trump’s dishonesty and deceit too often make us focus on his lies rather on something far more important: the future, and what a second Trump term would mean for the country. Many economists warn of disaster if Trump wins. They warn that his plan to impose tariffs or taxes on all imported goods will send inflation soaring and ignite a dangerous trade war that could cause a recession and throw millions out of work. Economists also warn that Trump’s plans, including his plan to slash taxes on the wealthy and corporations, not only will increase the federal debt by a colossal $7.8tn, but could bankrupt the social security system and lead to a 33% across-the-board cut in social security benefits.No wonder 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists signed a recent letter calling Trump’s economic agenda “counterproductive” and warning that it “will lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality”.In contrast to Trump, Kamala Harris has specific plans to improve the economy and help Americans cope with high prices. She has pledged to build 3m new housing units to help bring down housing prices. She also plans to give $25,000 in down payment assistance to first-time homebuyers. To help with the high cost of raising a family, she has called for creating a $3,600 tax credit per child and $6,000 for newborns. Recognizing how expensive caregiving needs can be, she wants to create a trailblazing Medicare at Home program to help pay for care for ageing parents.Nobel-winning economists said Harris’s economic agenda is “vastly superior” to Trump’s and “will improve our nation’s” employment opportunities, health, investment and fairness.American voters have a clear choice. They can choose Harris’s agenda, which promises a stronger, fairer economy, or Trump’s agenda, which will bring a worse, less stable economy with higher prices and less fairness.Unlike Trump, I’ll be honest and won’t claim that his economic agenda will bring the worst economy ever, even though his agenda looks plenty dangerous.

      Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labour and the workplace More

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      Alexi Lalas keeps tweeting Maga propaganda. Does it matter?

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      As the US men’s national team prepared to kick off against Panama earlier this month, Soccer Twitter warmed up for the first game of the Mauricio Pochettino era.Amid his routine match analysis, America’s most prominent soccer pundit retweeted old footage of Barack Obama discussing immigration policy that surfaced in an attempt to make the former president appear hypocritical and discredit Kamala Harris by association.The jarring mix of sports and politics is normal for Alexi Lalas, who stands out among soccer broadcasters for his open engagement with the imminent American presidential election and for his party affiliation.Lalas gave an interview on the Fox Business channel in July from the Republican National Convention which careened from how the event is “a cool place to be” to a discussion of the Barcelona prodigy Lamine Yamal. Speaking on Fox News radio from the convention, Lalas said he wants to challenge “the stereotype that exists when it comes to Republicans and certainly the right side of the political spectrum … I live in California, I work in soccer, I’m like a unicorn when it comes to politics out there and yet there are a lot of things that can unite us.”To judge by the volume of online abuse he attracts and airs on X – and to which he often responds with wit and generosity – his political output is having the opposite effect. That’s not surprising when his feed amplifies right-wing talking points, such as Lalas’ recent rehashing of video of a publicity stunt in which Donald Trump served fries to fawning supporters at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s in a specious attempt to taunt Harris.The ginger-bearded face of American soccer in the 1990s, a defender and rock musician who played in Serie A and won 96 caps for the USMNT, Lalas played every minute of the host nation’s four matches at the 1994 World Cup and became, wrote The Los Angeles Times, “the cult figure of America’s high summer”. After retirement he worked as an MLS executive, including for the Los Angeles Galaxy when they signed David Beckham.The mellow, mumbling kid who let David Letterman trim his pumpkin-hued goatee after USA ’94 is now a 54-year-old greying purveyor of indignant tirades for Fox Sports, proudly repping a segment of society who equate the profundity of their patriotism with the prominence of their Stars and Stripes flags and the decibel level of their bellowing about American greatness.With viral clips often attracting more views than live broadcasts on traditional TV channels, there is clear value in being the blowtorch of hot-take merchants. Given the sonic vanilla that is the corporate agenda-driven coverage of MLS on Apple TV, there may be a market for a celebrated American personality who provides and provokes trenchant opinions. But does that hold true when the talk moves from Pochettino’s right-wing to that of the GOP?“When you’re in the entertainment sector, going political tends to have very little upside because this country seems to be perpetually split, 49 to 48, and just in general it’s not going to make one side love you more because they’re just looking at what you’re doing on the field and in the announcer booth. But it will set off the other side,” says Mike Lewis, professor of marketing at Emory University and author of Fandom Analytics, a data-driven analysis of sports supporters.Lalas, a Ron DeSantis fan whose soccer podcast is called State of the Union in a nod to the president’s annual address, has more than 400,000 followers on X. “It’s my channel. I program it with what I like and what I find interesting. If it offends your sensibilities, there are millions of other channels for you to choose from. Go in peace,” Lalas wrote this month to a reader baffled by his divisive posts, which are typically retweets without additional commentary – an unusually coy style for him.That’s true for social media. But given his centrality to Fox’s coverage and the exclusivity of their rights, viewers will find it harder to swerve Lalas if they want to watch some of the biggest matches in the sport. And given how polarised and piqued the nation is and how intertwined party affiliation has become with personal identity, if viewers are aware of his political leanings, can they divorce that from his on-screen presence, even when he’s purely talking soccer? Do liberals want to hear a verdict on Christian Pulisic from Lalas any more than they want to buy a Tesla from the Trump super-booster Elon Musk?View image in fullscreen“It’s almost like a reflexive thing,” Lewis says, “that that’s an enemy now, and I don’t want to listen to an enemy while I watch the US men’s soccer team.” The risk of alienating roughly half your consumer base may be partially offset by the appeal of being perceived as bucking the liberal consensus as an unafraid and unfiltered Republican ambassador from deep blue Los Angeles in a progressive-leaning sport historically disparaged by conservatives.Like Trump, Lalas suggested the US were too woke after they went out of last year’s Women’s World Cup, and did not deviate from Republican orthodoxy in 2020 with a critical tweet when NWSL players took the knee for the national anthem. The Republican Party’s widespread antipathy towards diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging initiatives conflicts with the mission statement of the US Soccer Federation, which declares, “we integrate DEIB into everything we do”.There is a balancing act in playing a high-profile role in a mainstream channel – Fox, after all, has the rights to the 2026 World Cup – then sliding into the right-wing media ecosystem, where many conservatives have found audiences by stoking grievances and trolling the libs. One recent Lalas repost reads: “I check X for two reasons. Elon’s latest meme and seeing who Alexi ticked off today”.Fox Sports and Lalas declined to comment for this article. Like Fox News, Fox Sports is part of the Fox Corporation, which is controlled by Rupert Murdoch and family. So is the conservative-leaning sports news site, Outkick, which vows to question “the consensus and [expose] the destructive nature of ‘woke’ activism” and often cites Lalas.Politics and soccer are far from strangers. Two of the UK’s leading soccer broadcasters, Gary Lineker and Gary Neville, drew ire from British right-wingers for their criticism of the last Conservative government, with Lineker briefly removed from the BBC’s flagship football programme in 2023 for tweets about asylum policy that the broadcaster said breached impartiality rules.The American landscape, however, has changed since Jemele Hill was suspended by ESPN in 2017 for calling Trump a “white supremacist” on X and the network introduced a social media policy discouraging employees from openly taking sides and offering commentary beyond sports. Sticking to sports now seems blinkered. The ESPN star, Stephen A Smith, frequently opines on politics on other platforms and recently sparred with Fox News’ Sean Hannity. Fox Sports’ Colin Cowherd also talks politics, as does Dan LeBatard, who started his own podcast after criticisms of Trump contributed to his departure from ESPN.“There’s a price to pay for it. That’s why it is so hard to figure out the right policy, it’s very challenging to sort through what is a restriction on someone’s free speech” versus protecting the employer’s brand and reputation, says Patrick Crakes, a media consultant and former Fox Sports executive.“One of the reasons a lot of major sports personalities don’t [talk politics] is because you are a very general market, and do you really want to have to take 50% of the people that see you and fight them, or alienate them or make them uncomfortable with you? Sports, traditionally, I feel it was neutral ground. That’s increasingly changed.”Though political talk remains rare during game broadcasts and few commentators have overtly revealed political stances, perceptions of partisanship have become ingrained. “Republican-identifying sports media consumers find NBC Sports to be the most biased sports media outlet; Democratic-identifying sports media consumers find Fox Sports to be the most biased sports media outlet,” according to a survey for the University of Texas’ annual Politics in Sports Media report. “This suggests that the sports networks are reputationally connected to their parent news organizations.” The poll also found that 80% of Republicans do not want athletes to share their political beliefs compared with only 42% of Democrats.The line has also blurred between voters and spectators. “In the Trump era, we’ve started to see these political rallies that look like sporting events where you can have guys essentially face-painted up, they’ve got the red hats, the matching uniforms,” Lewis says. “I think there’s really powerful similarities between sports and politics in the way fandom works, particularly in the way fandom is so closely related to people’s identities.”The subordination of issues to identity and policies to personality means affiliations are ossified and compromise impossible, with Democrats no more likely to switch to supporting Republicans than would a Liverpool fan change allegiance to Manchester United. “If I’m teaching a class on sports marketing and I’m talking about fandom and I ask someone a question, ‘who are you a fan of,’ if they start to tell me two teams, there’s almost a reaction: ‘well, you’re not really a fan. You can’t like the Yankees and the Mets!’” Lewis says.“I think of it all as culture at this point. There’s almost this seamless connection across all these categories, entertainment to sports to politics,” he adds. “They are the culture, they are all happening simultaneously and all affecting each other.” Strangely, when everything is linked it feels like everything is fractured.Last year, Lalas wrote of the USWNT: “Politics, causes, stances, & behavior have made this team unlikeable to a portion of America.” Well, they could respond: right back at ya. And left-leaning observers might doubt the analytical prowess of a professional critic who, to apply a football metaphor to the politics on his X feed, focuses on one team’s shirt-pulling while ignoring the two-footed tackles flying in from the other side, and hails the “authenticity” of a serial liar and flip-flopper.More broadly, though, in a climate where it’s standard that politicians speak out on sports and countless celebrities issue political opinions and endorsements, why shouldn’t sports personalities enjoy the same freedom of expression? If we feel Lalas should keep quiet, shouldn’t we also feel that way about Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift?One difference: other forms of artistic expression, such as music, drama and writing, are often conceived and performed as explicit political statements while sports have been treated as a break from reality, not a reflection of it. That’s no longer sustainable as social media entangles news and opinion, the public and the personal. Wisely or not, Lalas isn’t only opposing a liberal consensus, he’s contributing to the erasure of a naive illusion. More

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      The RBA will likely hold interest rates – but are its calculations at risk of being overtaken by US election chaos?

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      When the Reserve Bank board meet next week to discuss interest rates, it will have an inescapable “best-laid schemes of mice and men” feel about it.For sure, there will the usual meticulous assembly and assessment of data, including Wednesday’s relatively benign inflation figures.The annual consumer price index landed at 2.8% for the September quarter from a year earlier, retreating for the seventh of the past eight quarters. It is now within the RBA’s 2%-3% target range for the first time since early 2021.Most of the other trends were friends too. Underlying inflation, as measured by trimming off more volatile items, eased half a percentage point from the June quarter, to 3.5% – or about where the RBA had expected it to be by the end of 2024.Shoppers may not yet appreciate it but the price of essentials, or non-discretionary items, were up 2.9%. Tradeable goods, including petrol, were barely up at all – rising just 0.6% – reflecting in part China’s faltering economy with more of their products exported.Services were the most obvious holdout. It crept up for a second straight quarter to an annual pace of 4.6% – reflecting strong jobs growth in that sector – and will no doubt prompt the RBA governor, Michele Bullock, to repeat concerns about “sticky” inflation.The RBA decision will almost certainly see it hold its cash rate at 4.35%, marking a year since its most recent rate hike. Attention will likely focus on whether the board at least considered a rate cut – something it hasn’t done in about four years.As they do every quarter, the RBA’s monetary mavens will also update the central bank’s forecasts of where they think everything – from the oil price to government spending and household saving – will change over the next two years.A routine event, as far as the schemes of the women and men of our central bank go. But how long might it take before Bullock’s nuanced comments or the finely calibrated forecasts are overtaken by events?After all, the first polls will be opening in the US not long after the RBA’s board meeting wraps upon Tuesday.Counting delays can be expected to elevate tensions – unless there is a decisive victory for Democrats or Republicans.So far, markets seem to be adjusting to varying expectations of whether the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, will prevail for the Democrats or Donald Trump will make a return to the White House he reluctantly and ungraciously left four years ago.“A Harris win is likely to see a great degree of policy continuity regarding trade (and, more broadly, industrial policy), immigration and Federal Reserve independence,” NAB’s senior economist, Tony Kelly, opined in a report released on Wednesday.“A Trump presidency in contrast would pursue substantially different policy in these areas, although a divided Congress would impede some of his agenda.”Trump’s promise of a 60% tariff on many imports is just one of the policy departures from the Democrat president, Joe Biden.The RBA board will no doubt be mulling similar advice as it weighs up various scenarios – although don’t expect the wargaming to appear in its meeting minutes.Perhaps everything will go smoothly in the world’s biggest economy. Everyone – in the US and elsewhere – can then return to dealing with more prosaic considerations, such as what December quarter inflation may look like and how soon might the RBA cut rates.The alternative, though, of US political fights moving from the pulpit to the courts to the streets can’t be airily dismissed. More

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      US presidential election updates: Kamala Harris delivers closing address while Trump and Biden talk ‘garbage’

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      From the Ellipse – the Washington park where Donald Trump delivered his speech before the 6 January 2021 storming of the Capitol – Kamala Harris addressed the nation on Tuesday evening with a week to go before the election. She portrayed herself as in-touch with the worries of ordinary Americans, while labelling her opponent a “petty tyrant”.With thousands watching on in person, Harris urged Americans to vote in the most important election of their lifetimes for a “new generation” of leadership. Harris is a generation younger than Trump – and than Joe Biden, whom she replaced on the Democratic ticket.Meanwhile Trump said of America that “It’s like we’re a giant garbage can” and of the Puerto Rican community – a large and influential group of voters repeatedly insulted by the Republican campaign – that nobody loves them like he does.Meanwhile, Biden sought to clarify remarks after it appeared that he had referred to Trump supporters as “garbage” during a town hall with young Latino voters. Biden said his comment referred only to the “hateful rhetoric” of a comedian at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally.Here is what else happened on Tuesday:Kamala Harris election news and updates

      Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania governor and high-profile Democrat backer of Harris, said he would not call Trump supporters “garbage” as Biden was interpreted as having done. Speaking on CNN, Shapiro was shown video of the comment Biden made earlier. He was asked for a response. “I would never insult the good people of Pennsylvania or any Americans even if they chose to support a candidate that I didn’t support,” Shapiro replied.

      Harris will spend election night at her alma mater, Howard University, in Washington, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss her campaign’s plans. If elected, Harris would be the first graduate of a historically Black university to occupy the Oval Office.

      The leader of the United Auto Workers (UAW) made a last plea to union members to vote for Harris, casting the election as a fight between the interests of the working class and billionaires.

      Michelle Obama took the stump in Georgia. The former first lady’s organisation When We All Vote hosted a rally for more than 2,000 people at an arena in College Park, near Atlanta’s airport – a slickly produced event that was dominated by earnest pleas to vote from a star-studded roster.
      Donald Trump election news and updates

      Urged by some allies to apologise for racist comments made by speakers at his weekend rally, Donald Trump took the opposite approach on Tuesday, saying it was an “honour to be involved” in such an event and calling the scene a “lovefest” – the same term he has used to describe the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol.

      The supreme court on Tuesday rejected an emergency appeal to remove Robert F Kennedy Jr from presidential ballots in Wisconsin and Michigan. Kennedy wanted to remove himself from the ballot in the two crucial swing states after dropping his independent bid and endorsing Donald Trump. He argued that keeping him on violated his first amendment rights by wrongly implying he still wanted to be elected president.

      Trump’s Truth Social stock market valuation is now greater than the estimated value of Elon Musk’s X after an extraordinary rally ahead of next week’s election. Some context around that, though: Twitter/X’s valuation is calculated to have tanked by as much as 90% since Musk took over. Shares in Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), the former president’s tiny social media empire, rose 8.8% on Tuesday. Trading of the stock was suspended several times due to volatility.

      JD Vance hit back at those who say Trump is a fascist, accusing Harris and her allies of disrespecting second world war veterans as he campaigned on Tuesday in one of the most hotly contested regions of battleground Michigan.

      In a new book, Rudy Giuliani claims his extensive legal problems and those of Trump are the results of persecution by “a fascist regime” run by Harris and Biden – all while avoiding mention of a $150m defamation award against him won by two Georgia election workers. The book repeats the lies about electoral fraud that saw him lose law licences in New York and Washington DC.
      Elsewhere on the campaign trail

      Powered by consumer spending, the US economy likely kept expanding at a healthy pace from July through September despite the pressure of still-high interest rates. The commerce department is expected to report on Wednesday that gross domestic product – the economy’s total output of goods and services – grew at a 2.6% annual pace last quarter, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet. That would be down from a 3% annual rate in the April-June period.

      China’s government on Wednesday implied that if Trump wins he could “discard” Taiwan given the US has always pursued an “America first” policy. Trump has made several comments on the campaign trail saying Chinese-claimed Taiwan should pay to be protected and accusing the island of stealing American semiconductor business.
      Read more about the 2024 US election:

      Presidential poll tracker

      Harris and Trump policies

      What to know about early voting More

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      Biden says he meant to condemn comedian, not Trump supporters, in ‘garbage’ comments

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      Joe Biden put out a statement that he had “meant to say” earlier on Tuesday that a pro-Trump comedian’s “hateful rhetoric” about Puerto Rico was “garbage”. But in an edited video clip already widely circulating on social media Tuesday evening, a phrase that came out of Biden’s mouth was “the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters”.Republican politicians and rightwing media outlets quickly picked up the clip to argue that Biden had called Trump’s supporters garbage, comparing his remarks with Hillary Clinton’s labeling of half of Trump supporters as belonging in “a basket of deplorables” in 2016, a comment that is widely seen as undermining her campaign.Biden’s full comments on Tuesday are somewhat garbled, and some journalists transcribing the remarks argued that Biden really did seem to be trying to be refer to comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s remarks, not all of Trump’s supporters, while others reported that the president had indeed suggested that Trump supporters themselves were garbage.Biden’s comment came during a zoom call with Voto Latino, in which Biden refered to Hinchcliffe’s comments and said the Puerto Ricans he knows are “good, decent, honorable, people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s – his – his demonization of things is unconscionable, and it’s un-American, and it’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done.” But it wasn’t entirely clear whether he had said the singular “supporter’s” or the plural “supporters”, describing Trump’s base more broadly.In the official transcript of Biden’s remarks released Tuesday night by the White House press office, the comment has an apostrophe: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s – his – his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”Speaking at a campaign event with Trump, Senator Marco Rubio picked up the remark as “breaking news” and told Trump supporters that Biden had dismissed a huge number of everyday Americans as “garbage”, while conservative outlets amplified the remark. Biden quickly tweeted that he had “meant to say” that the comedian’s remarks were “garbage”.The furore over Biden’s “garbage” remarks comes on what was supposed to be a big night for Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, as she attempted to make her closing argument of the campaign, urging the country to “turn the page” on Trump. Harris spoke in front of tens of thousands of supporters in Washington DC. She made her case in the location where Trump addressed his supporters on January 6, before many of them went on to storm to US capitol in an attempt to halt the certification of Biden’s 2020 election victory.Biden’s slightly garbled original comments mark another gaffe for a gaffe-prone politician on the eve of a very tight election.Polling averages show that Harris and Trump remain locked in what the Guardian’s poll tracker calls a nail-bitingly close presidential race.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Tuesday evening, the polling expert Nate Silver tweeted that, if Harris loses, “you’re going to get a hot take … from me about Joe Biden”.Hinchcliffe, the host of a podcast called Kill Tony, was the first speaker at a rally for Trump at Madison Square Garden on Sunday night. His racist comments have sparked broad condemnation, including from Republicans, and were even disavowed by the Trump campaign.“There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yeah. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” Hinchcliffe said. He also said that Latinos “love making babies … There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside, just like they did to our country.”NBC reported that Hinchcliffe had tested the same joke about Puerto Rico, and that the joke had bombed, at a comedy set in New York the night before the Trump rally. More

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      Trump claims ‘nobody loves Puerto Rican community more than I do’ at Pennsylvania rally

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      Donald Trump praised Puerto Ricans on Tuesday during a Pennsylvania rally, days after a comedian made a racist joke and referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage” at one of his rallies.“Nobody loves our Latino community and our Puerto Rican community more than I do,” the former president said a little over an hour into a rally in Allentown, in the Lehigh Valley, which has a sizable Latino population.More than 68,000 people – over half of the total population – in Allentown are Hispanic or Latino, according to US census data. A few blocks from the rally, a home had a Puerto Rican flag posted on the door.He also claimed that he had done a lot for Puerto Rico as president. Trump drew ridicule for tossing paper towels into a crowd on the island after it was ravaged by a hurricane; blocked hurricane aid; and mused about selling the island.He also again praised the rally at Madison Square Garden, saying “the love was unbelievable” and told a rambling story about watching a SpaceX rocket that lasted longer than his discussion of Puerto Ricans.Many of the speakers on Tuesday, including the Puerto Rican official Zoraida Buxó, emphasized their Puerto Rican heritage, signaling the campaign’s effort to win Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania, the key battleground state in this election, where polls show a tight race.“We won’t get rattled, we won’t yield to ignorance, foolishness, or irrational thoughtlessness,” she said.Senator Marco Rubio, another speaker at the rally, also joined Trump onstage during the former presidents remarks to share with the crowd comments from Joe Biden Tuesday in which the president condemned the remarks about Puerto Ricans and said: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s – his – his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American”, according to a White House transcript. After Republicans circulated a clip of the statement, calling it an attack on Trump supporters, Biden put out a statement saying he meant to refer to the comedian who made the joke.A small protest arrived outside the arena just before the rally began on Tuesday. Some of the protesters were carrying signs that said Latinos for Harris-Walz, while others wore the Puerto Rican flag.

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      One of the people marching was Luis Gonzalez, a retired 65-year-old truck driver from Allentown. He wore a sweater with the Puerto Rican flag stitched on it.“The guy has no idea what he’s talking about,” he said. “I was born in Puerto Rico. That island as well as all the other islands around it are beautiful.“For anybody to say that it’s a garbage island – they’ve never been to the Caribbean.”But inside the rally, few people thought the fallout from the comment would have much effect on Trump. Some had not heard it.“It was made in poor taste, I have to admit. But Donald Trump is Donald Trump, ” said Mark Melendez, 55, who is Puerto Rican and traveled to the rally from New Jersey. “I don’t think it will affect him; it might.”At least one audience member was holding a sign that said “Boricuas for Trump”, using a term that describes people of Puerto Rican descent.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJackie Beller, 60, who lives near Allentown, thought the joke was funny.“If you take a comedian out of context and you look at it as a serious thing, yes, you would be offended,” Beller said.“It’s all a joke – I’ve spoken to some Puerto Rican people and they weren’t offended, so I don’t know,” said Mary Mendez, 65, a retired paramedic from New York.Trump’s speech kicking off the final week of the presidential race mixed personal attacks, grievance, anti-immigrant rhetoric and a smattering of policies. He accused Democrats of having already cheated, misrepresenting an ongoing investigation in Lancaster county in an example of how he is priming his supporters to challenge the election results if he loses.His remarks were less an appeal to undecided voters than a full-throated appeal to his base, pledging that he would be able to fix all of the US’s ills.“This is gonna be a very special time. It’s going to be America’s new golden age. Every problem facing us can be solved,” he said.As Kamala Harris made her closing argument in Washington and called Trump “unstable” and “obsessed with revenge”, Trump called Harris a “low-IQ individual” and mused about getting retribution against Michelle Obama for criticizing him on the campaign trial.“Michelle Obama was very nasty,” he said. “I’ve gone out of my way to be nice to Michelle. Haven’t said a damn thing about her. She hit me.” More