Joke from Tony Hinchcliffe apparently bombed when he told it on Saturday night, a day before New York rally
The podcaster who provoked an angry backlash against Donald Trump’s campaign with a racist joke about Puerto Rico reportedly tested out the gags at a comedy club the night before delivering them at Sunday’s televised rally at Madison Square Garden.
Tony Hinchcliffe, whose 11-minute set has thrown Trump’s team into damage limitation mode a week before the presidential election, made the same quip, calling the territory “a floating island of garbage”, at the Stand club in New York on Saturday, according to NBC.
The joke bombed, drawing just a few awkward chuckles, NBC said, citing one of its own producers and three audience members.
Yeah the joke fits Tony’s IDGAF style of comedy where literally nothing is off limits.
And while in other context it would still be a bad joke, it wouldn’t be taken anywhere near as bad as at a political rally like this. It doesn’t come across as a joke at all given the other political rhetoric surrounding it.
It’s especially insane since he was literally just at Madison Square Garden a month or so ago for like 3 days doing a massive Kill Tony special with 3 something like 300 other smaller comedians.
The audience is at least 50% of this type of joke. Like if the punch line was making fun of Trump treating Puerto Rico like trash it could work as a joke.
But in the context of Trump’s wishdotcom nazi rally it isn’t a joke, it is just being cruel because the audience agrees with the statement. There isn’t a punchline, it is just calling Puerto Rico names and laughing at them like the bullies that maga idiots are.
It’s interesting to me. He read the room just fine, he just didn’t read the room’s global position.
He’s a talented comedian in the roast/shock kinda of genre, but a political rally? A bit out of his element. And a bit stupid for the GOP to think he’d be a good fit here.
Sucks to suck.
Right? In the correct setting and with a lot of jokes on the environment in the set leading up to it… he might have gotten away with it. But at a fascist rally in MSG he was just vocalizing the sentiment in the room, like court jesters would do.
Now the trump team can climb on their podium and cry how everyone is a snowflake and point at this outrage to invigorate their base.
I guess they underestimated the backlash.