Tony Hinchcliffe, the comedian who raised eyebrows with jokes about Puerto Rico at President-elect Donald Trump's Madison Square Garden rally, says he won't be apologizing for his controversial comments anytime soon.
"I love Puerto Ricans, they're very smart people. They're smart, they're street smart, and they're smart enough to know when they're being used as political fodder," Hinchcliffe said as he opened his live podcast "Kill Tony" on Monday. "And right now that is happening. And … I apologize to absolutely nobody."
"… not to the Puerto Ricans, not to the whites, not to the Blacks, not to the Palestinians, not to the Jews, and not to my own mother, who I made fun of during the set," he continued as the crowd erupted with laughter.
Hinchcliffe, who is known for his dark humor and insult comedy, joked that Puerto Rico was "literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean" during Trump's Madison Square Garden rally in late October. Backlash to the comedian's routine swiftly ensued, with critics accusing him of racism and questioning Trump's rhetoric on the campaign trail.
The ensuing brouhaha even led to Trump's campaign distancing itself from Hinchcliffe in the final days of the presidential campaign.
During his podcast, Hinchcliffe let his audience in on the joke's factual basis. The Biden administration directed more than $3 billion to help Puerto Rico tackle a landfill problem it's been trying to address for years.
He joked that he was apparently the "only person who knew about this, unfortunately."
While he admitted that "perhaps that venue" was not the right place for the off-color joke about Puerto Rico, Hinchcliffe stood by his style and insisted he would not apologize for it.
"To the mainstream media and to everybody trying to slander me online, that's what I do," he said. "I go hard and that's never going to change."
Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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