Trump Now Claims He Has No Idea Who That Comedian Even Is

Even some Republicans, like Sen. Rick Scott in Florida and House Speaker Mike Johnson, denounced the remarks. Shortly after Hinchcliffe’s speech, Trump campaign senior adviser Danielle Alvarez issued a statement saying, “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.” Then, on Monday, someone leaked that the Trump campaign had intervened to stop Hinchcliffe from calling Harris a “cunt,” as if that deserves praise instead of questions about why the campaign greenlit everything else he (and everyone else) said. 

Now, predictably, both Trump and Vance are trying to distance themselves from Hinchcliffe. (I wonder if this has anything to do with the substantial Puerto Rican population in the key swing state of Pennsylvania???) In a Tuesday interview with ABC News, Trump point-blank denied knowing who Hinchcliffe is: “I don’t know him; someone put him up there. I don’t know who he is.” Trump said he hadn’t even heard Hinchcliffe’s remarks. This, of course, is the most classic Trump spin possible: Once someone does something that could hurt Trump in the polls, he pretends not to know them. Whether it’s a Project 2025 writer, the late Jeffrey Epstein, or, in this case, a right-wing comedian, Trump develops sudden, incurable, and highly selective amnesia, writing anyone who’s become a political liability out of his memory. But even if Trump really doesn’t know Hinchcliffe, what does it say about his leadership that he’d let a complete stranger headline his rally? Makes you think.

Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump, said on Fox News on Monday that we’re all overreacting to “a comedian who made a joke in poor taste,” and, “Obviously, that joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or our campaign, and I think it is sad that the media will pick up on one joke that was made by a comedian, rather than the truths that were shared by the phenomenal list of speakers that we had.” Of course, there’s nothing “obvious” about that, given how one of Trump’s core campaign messages is “mass deportations now.” And speaking of that “phenomenal list of speakers,” they were all effectively saying the same thing as Hinchcliffe. So!

Meanwhile, Vance, who’s married to an Indian-American woman with whom he shares three biracial children, also pretended to know nothing about anything. On Monday, he claimed that he somehow hadn’t even heard Hinchcliffe’s remarks. Nonetheless, Vance said he’s “so over” people getting offended at “every little thing.”

“Maybe it’s a stupid, racist joke. Maybe it is not. But we have to stop getting so offended at every little thing in the United States of America,” he said. “I think that it’s telling that Kamala Harris’ closing message is essentially that all of Donald Trump’s voters are Nazis and you should get really pissed off about a comedian telling a joke.” Vance can certainly convince himself the Nazi comparisons are unfair—sure! But if so many people were calling me that, I, personally, would introspect at least a little about why. To be clear, Harris, like former, high-level Trump administration officials, has called Trump a fascist, but never a “Nazi.”

In any case, it’s clear the Trump campaign and the GOP writ large were unprepared for the consequences of such a racist rally. I’m not sure this counts as an “October Surprise,” since it’s hardly surprising. But if nothing else, it’s certainly an October disruption, and a severe miscalculation in what Trump’s camp seems to think they can get away with saying and doing, especially this close to Election Day.