**Welcome to Inside Washington. Election day is 6 days (and a few hours) away.**
The final week of campaigning should be all about what George H W Bush used to call "the Big Mo,'" as in momentum. Ostensibly, that's why Donald Trump wanted to have his rally in Madison Square Garden. Aside from being a New Yorker to his core, holding a huge rally in navy-blue New York City was meant to be a show of strength for Trump ahead of election week.
But the event became a disaster before Trump took to the stage. Early-in-the-night comedian Tony Hinchcliffe's joke: "There's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it's called Puerto Rico," set off a cascade of negative reactions that rapidly spun out of control.
The Trump campaign later distanced itself from the joke, but it was too late. Puerto Rican celebrities like Jennifer Lopez, Liza Colón-Zayas, Marc Anthony and Luis Fonsi all denounced the remarks. Then, the final shoe dropped when Bad Bunny, one of the most-streamed artists on Spotify, endorsed Kamala Harris.
The Harris campaign has sought to make the most out of the remarks, touting the support of Puerto Rican superstars. On Tuesday, it announced that Lopez will join Harris in Las Vegas, a city with a huge Latino population.
Trashing an entire group of Americans — and yes, Puerto Ricans are Americans and only don't have a vote because of a shameful colonial legacy — would be a huge gaffe, even by Trump's standards. It opened old wounds for Trump, given his poor management of Hurricane Maria in 2017, where he famously threw paper towels when visiting the island. In one of his most vile remarks, he appeared to claim that Puerto Ricans were lying about how many people died in the two hurricanes that hit during that time period.
But the latest remarks have come at the worst possible time — as he was already set to visit Allentown, Pennsylvania as part of his final week of campaigning.
While Allentown and much of the Lehigh Valley are associated with white working-class steelworkers, the area has seen its Hispanic population explode in the past decade. Hispanics now make up more than half of Allentown's population.
And Harris could not have planned Trump's rally better. Last week, Governor Tim Walz, Harris's running mate, visited Allentown as part of the Harris campaign's Hispanic outreach.
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