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Notes -
The ingroup would have been if the punchline was “Long Island” (or indeed Staten Island). Puerto Ricans aren’t GOP voters like Cubans are, they’re a core Dem base in NYC which is why people have said this was potentially strategically unwise (not that NY matters, but still). If he’d said Haiti NYT journalists would call the rally ‘racist’ on Twitter or say the remarks were “racially charged” in the press, but not much else would happen, because almost no Haitians are going to vote for Trump.
Given who the MAGA right see as their outgroup, "Manhattan" would have been even better. NYC also has notorious problems with garbage and rats - which are much more well-known than Puerto Rico's because, well, NYC. In the second half of 2024 they are introducing bins as a new, innovative garbage management innovation. The campaign to do this had used #Trashcity as a hashtag on the basis that everyone knew it referred to NYC.
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