Nobody beats Trump at trash talk

“Garbage In, Garbage Out” is a computer programming principle which states that the quality of a system’s output is determined by the quality of its input. It’s also a phrase that speaks to US politics this week. 

After a string of good news cycles for the Republican campaign, the Democrats finally believed they had caught a break on Sunday night after the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made a joke about Puerto Rico on stage at Trump’s mega-rally in Madison Square Garden in New York. “I don’t know if you know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now,” said Hinchcliffe. “It’s called Puerto Rico.” Other speakers made other ill-judged remarks, but the garbage line seemed to stick. 

Hinchcliffe is famous for the sheer offensiveness of his comedy but the Democrats, knowing that nearly a million Puerto Ricans live in swing states, seized on his quip as yet more evidence that Trumpworld is racist. Armies of Harris campaign surrogates duly marched to the airwaves to express their horror at such “dehumanizing” rhetoric. The Trump campaign, on the back foot for the first time in weeks, felt compelled to officially distance itself from the remark.

But then Joe Biden went and spoiled it all by saying something stupid, as he often does. On a zoom call with Latino voters, he said: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters — his — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”

Oops. Team Biden-Harris quickly sought to clarify that Joe meant “supporter’s” — with an apostrophe. He was talking about Hinchcliffe, not the millions of Americans who support Trump. 

But everybody remembers Hillary Clinton calling Trump fans a “basket of deplorables” in 2016 — and look how well that worked out. Suddenly, Team Trump was on the offended offensive. “Moments ago,” declared a Donald-signed campaign email. “Kamala’s boss crooked Joe Biden just called ALL my supporters GARBAGE — HE WAS TALKING TO YOU!”

Biden backtracked. Harris distanced herself from his remark. But it was too late. Trump knew he was on to a winner, and yesterday he performed his second brilliant and hilarious campaign stunt of the past ten days. Sporting a high-vis trucker vest, he walked off Trump Force One, his luxury jet, in the swing state of Wisconsin. He then climbed into the front of the magnificent white garbage truck marked Trump-Vance and drove off the tarmac. After that, still wearing the vest, he went on stage in the city of Green Bay and said: “I have to begin by saying 250 million Americans are not garbage,” he said. His hyperbole is half the fun: 250 million is not the number of Trump fans in America; it’s roughly the amount of Americans who didn’t vote for Joe Biden in 2020.

Trump also made some amusing, instantly viral remarks about how his staff told him he looked slim in his common-man attire. It was as electrifyingly ridiculous and internet-savvy a campaign moment as his shift in McDonald’s in Pennsylvania. “Genius-level trolling,” said Elon Musk, on Twitter/X, and many people agree. When it comes to trash talk, you can’t beat the Donald.

That said, Trumpworld might be getting carried away with the power of these comedy routines. Yes, it’s publicity gold. But Trump’s recovery in the polls in recent weeks has mostly come from Harris’s poor performances, not his sublime attention-grabbing. 

Last night, at Harris’s rally at the Pennsylvania Farm Show, the stench of manure was overwhelming. A perfect metaphor for her candidacy, some might say, if we weren’t all too busy talking about the Republican nominee and his garbage truck. 

This article was first published in Freddy Gray’s subscriber-only Americano newsletter. Sign up here.