Donald Trump’s campaign shares a good lesson in being Too Online

Some voters thought Trump was doubling down on the Puerto Rico "garbage" comment from his rally when he rode in a garbage truck.

When Donald Trump rode out in a garbage truck a few days ago, his campaign and supporters thought they had something big on their hands. A possible gaffe from Joe Biden potentially gave the MAGA faithful a new “basket of deplorables” moment, harking back to Hillary Clinton’s blunder in 2016.

But, it doesn’t appear like that is going to happen this time. In fact, it appears the opposite may happen. Trump is the one with the misstep because his campaign and supporters are just way too online.

Garbage

When Donald Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden last weekend, one very specific moment went viral: Rally speaker and comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s comment calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”

Hinchcliffe’s “joke” received such a negative reaction that the Trump campaign put out a press release not too short after distancing itself from the comments. However, the damage was already done. From mainstream media to clips spreading on TikTok, X, and other social media platforms, a Trump rally speaker calling Puerto Rico “garbage” was headline news.

Subsequent polls showed that among swing states with significant Puerto Rican populations, Hinchcliffe’s comment may actually make the difference.

Garbage Truck

Fast forward just two days later and Trump’s campaign and his supporters thought they had the antidote to Hinchcliffe’s comment, which was still being talked about.

During a Zoom call with Latino voters, Biden appeared to call Trump’s supporters “garbage” when discussing the Puerto Rico comment from just days earlier at Trump’s MSG rally. The White House claims that Biden said “supporter’s” with an apostrophe, as if he was just referring to Hinchcliffe. We can debate about what Biden really said but it honestly does’t seem to matter.

Trump’s campaign and his supporters pounced. Right wingers online were starting to refer to themselves as “garbage” like they did back in 2016 when Clinton called them “deplorables.” Trump fans shared their intent to wear garbage bags for Hallowen. Some even did.

But, the day before Halloween, while Trump was in Wisconsin, the former President decided to don an orange-and-yellow safety vest and hop into the passenger seat of a garbage truck. The thinking appeared to be that, much like his “day working at McDonald’s” stunt, Trump’s “garbage truck” stunt would endear him with regular, everyday people.

Too Online

Now, just days away from the election, the Huffington Post published an article basically confirming what I assumed might happen: Hinchcliffe calling Puerto Rico “garbage” went extremely viral and Biden seemingly calling Trump supporters “garbage” did not.

The HuffPost article focuses on Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania and found that Hinchcliffe’s “joke” is making a real impact with voters. You can read the article here.

However, one interesting moment towards the end of HuffPost’s piece is about Trump’s “garbage truck” comment specifically.

Two Puerto Rican voters tell HuffPost that “Hinchcliffe’s remarks were the reason they planned to vote for Harris on Tuesday.” One of those voters shares that Trump’s garbage truck stunt in Wisconsin was “an additional insult.”

“If he didn’t have nothing to do with it, what’s he doing in the garbage truck?” the voter said.

As I predicted, it appears that there are some voters out there who did not know that Trump’s garbage truck stunt was a reference to Biden’s comment. They assumed it was Trump backing or doubling down on Hinchcliffe’s joke.

Taking a look at Google Trends, it appears that Trump and his campaign may have thought that the Biden comment went much further than it did thanks to the right wing echo chamber.

Embedded in this post is both the past 7 days and 30 days of Google Trends data for searches on “Puerto Rico,” “Tony Hinchcliffe,” and search terms for Biden’s garbage comment and Trump’s garbage truck stunt.

The Biden “garbage” comment never gets anywhere near as viral as searches for Hinchcliffe or his joke about Puerto Rico. However, searches for Trump’s garbage truck stunt surges beyond the Biden comment and seems to garner the same interest as Hinchcliffe’s joke.

So, it seems there are quite a few people out there who have heard about Hinchcliffe’s Puerto Rico joke at Trump’s rally and have heard about Trump’s garbage truck stunt, however, they may not have any idea about Biden’s comment. According to at least one Puerto Rican voter, what’s left to do but assume that Trump was endorsing Hinchcliffe’s joke about Puerto Rico being garbage?