What happened
Donald Trump and his campaign hustled Monday to stem the fallout from racist and sexist comments made by speakers at Sunday's Madison Square Garden rally, while also taking umbrage at the criticism. Most of the damage control was over comedian Tony Hinchcliffe's joke that Puerto Rico is a "floating island of garbage." But Trump focused on comparisons between his rally and a pro-Nazi, antisemitic and anti-communist "Pro American Rally" rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939. "I am not a Nazi," he told a rally in Atlanta Monday night. "I'm the opposite of a Nazi."
Who said what
Trump claimed that Kamala Harris, who he called "a fascist," and her campaign "use 'He's Hitler' and then they say, 'He's a Nazi.'" Harris has not publicly called Trump "Hitler" or a "Nazi," but her running mate Gov. Tim Walz said Monday "there's a direct parallel" between Trump's MSG rally and "a big rally that happened in the mid-1930s."
Harris has called Trump a "fascist," though, agreeing with recent assessments from his former White House chief of staff, retired Gen. John Kelly, and Gen. Mark Milley. Kelly also said Trump argued "Hitler did some good things" and lamented he didn't have loyal military leaders like "Hitler's generals." Trump's "I am not a Nazi" line, "even in an 'LOL nothing matters' political moment, could have some shelf life — eight days out from Election Day," Adam Wren said at Politico.
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The Harris campaign turned the Puerto Rico joke into a campaign ad, but it's organically "spreading like wildfire through the community," Norberto Dominguez, a Democratic precinct captain in heavily Puerto Rican Allentown, Pennsylvania, said to Politico. "If we weren't engaged before," said Victor Martinez, owner of a Spanish-language radio station in Allentown, "we're all paying attention now." The Trump campaign has distanced itself from the Puerto Rico joke.
What next?
Harris campaign aides and allies are "growing cautiously optimistic about her chances of victory," The New York Times said, and even some people close to Trump "worry that the push to label him a budding dictator who has praised Hitler could move small but potentially meaningful numbers of persuadable voters" in what's essentially a 50-50 race.
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