Trump calls Madison Square Garden rally a ‘lovefest’ amid backlash over speakers’ racist remarks

Lalee Ibssa , Soo Rin Kim, and Kelsey Walsh

October 29, 2024

(PALM BEACH, Fla.) -- Former President Donald Trump called his rally at Madison Square Garden a "lovefest" on Tuesday as backlash continues over racist and crude comments made by some speakers at the iconic New York City venue.

Trump spoke about the rally near the end of remarks at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday that were largely focused on swiping at Vice President Kamala Harris' record ahead of her speech at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., where she'll make a closing argument to voters.

"It was like a lovefest, an absolute lovefest," Trump said. "It was my honor to be involved."

"I don't think anybody's ever seen what happened the other night at Madison Square Garden, the love, the love in that room -- it was breathtaking, and you could have filled it many, many times with the people that were unable to get in," Trump said.

Trump did not address specific comments made on Sunday that prompted criticism, most notably comedian Tony Hinchcliffe's joke that Puerto Rico was an "island of floating garbage."

Trump told ABC News Senior Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott earlier Tuesday that he didn't know the comedian and hadn't seen his comments despite them dominating the airwaves the past two days.

"I don't know him, someone put him up there. I don't know who he is," Trump told ABC's Scott.

When asked what he made of the comments, Trump didn't take an opportunity to denounce them and repeated his claim that he hadn't heard them.

His campaign has said the comedian's comments don't reflect the views of Trump or the campaign.

Trump did not take any questions from reporters during the event at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday.

The former president touched on a variety of familiar campaign themes as he hit Harris over her record on immigration and the economy.

With Harris expected to highlight the violence that happened on Jan. 6 during her speech in D.C. on Tuesday evening, Trump focused on immigration, using anti-immigrant rhetoric as he was standing next to people who have lost their family members to undocumented crime.

Trump had very low energy as he spent most of the press conference repeating his usual stump speech on border security, economy, foreign policy and other topics, but ended his remarks with a promise to "fight like hell" in the final week of the election and once he's elected.

"We're going to fight like hell for the next seven days and then hopefully…" Trump said.

"Hopefully, and most importantly, we're going to be fighting even harder for the next four years because we're going to turn this around and we're going to make this country," he concluded.

He also began his remarks by repeating falsehoods about the election, claiming Democrats "stole" it when President Joe Biden stepped aside and Harris was nominated as the party's nominee. He also suggested there were "bad spots" in Pennsylvania, a battleground state considered crucial to the election outcome.

"There are some bad spots in Pennsylvania where some serious things have been caught, or are in the process of being caught, but the election itself is going very well," Trump said.