Trump supporters, Hispanic protesters offer contrasts before Trump rally
Former president makes pitch to Pennsylvania voters
Thousands of supporters of former President Donald Trump, many wearing T-shirts and caps emblazoned with his name, waited for hours in a line that snaked through center city Allentown on Tuesday as a small but vocal group of protesters with a megaphone chanted “Donald Trump is not welcome” in English and Spanish.
The Republican presidential nominee’s visit to Allentown’s PPL Center was his first campaign stop in an area with a high Puerto Rican population following his rally on Sunday at Madison Square Garden in New York City where warm-up speaker comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”
Slightly more than half of Allentown’s 125,845 residents are Latino or Hispanic with more than 33,000 of those being Puerto Rican. Allentown ranks eighth in the U.S. among cities with large Puerto Rican communities.
As a flank of police officers stood nearby, the confluence of the two groups around 4 p.m. was mostly civil with Trump supporters standing on the west side of Seventh Street shouting, “We want Trump,” and protesters protected by barricades on the east side of the city’s major thoroughfare yelling, “Immigrants make America great.”
Only one Trump supporter could be heard yelling obscenities and telling the protesters, “Go back to your own [expletive] country” and “Pay your taxes.”
The timing of Trump’s visit put Allentown in the national spotlight with Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk, a Democrat and grandson of a Cuban immigrant, in high demand for interviews.
“This is like a direct poke at a place that we all hold dear in our hearts,” Tuerk told Armchair Lehigh Valley before the rally. “And so people are legitimately mad about it because it evokes all of the racist stuff and … Puerto Rican citizens of the United States being treated like second-class citizens. And our Dominican friends started to hear that too, and they're like, ‘Well, that's what they think about us.’ “
He said many Hispanics in the city will vote for Vice President Kamala Harris after the “garbage” comment at Trump’s Sunday rally.
Just prior to his visit to Allentown, Trump held a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort, where he said it was an “honor to be involved” in the Madison Square Garden rally, according to The Associated Press. Trump referred to the scene as a “lovefest” — the same term he has used to describe the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Trump’s PPL speech
Trump started speaking at the PPL Center shortly before 8 p.m. (Armchair Lehigh Valley’s request for media credentials was denied by the Trump campaign so we watched the speech online.)
He didn’t reference the controversy surrounding Hinchcliffe but noted that criminals are crossing the southern border into the U.S. “We’re like a giant garbage can,” he said.
He introduced Zoraida Buxo, Puerto Rico’s shadow U.S. senator, who told the crowd that she endorsed Trump and David McCormick, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate attempting to unseat incumbent Democrat Bob Casey.
Trump then said, “I’m getting support from Latinos like never before. No one loves our Latino community and our Puerto Rican community like I do.”
Trump also called Sen. Marco Rubio onstage, and the Florida senator reported “breaking news” that Biden had called Trump supporters “garbage.”
(As reported by NBC News, Biden said, "The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters," Biden said. "[Trump's] demonization of Latinos is unconscionable and it is un-American." The Associated Press reported Biden later tried to clarify his comment, saying he was talking about “the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter.”)
In his nearly 90-minute speech, Trump hit on familiar themes from other rallies: Harris is incompetent and has destroyed America by making it unsafe with an open-border policy. He called her a Marxist and a communist.
He said she would take people’s handguns. (Harris, who owns a handgun, has never said that.)
He said he would end inflation – although it’s fallen from a high of 9.1% to 2.4% – and slash prices.
“I will end Kamala's war on Pennsylvania energy, and we will frack, frack, frack and drill, baby drill,” he said, referencing Harris’ earlier opposition to fracking for natural gas in the Keystone State, something she said she now supports.
He proposed to restore full state and local tax deductions, which were eliminated for many property owners with his 2017 tax cuts.
He will not tax tips or Social Security benefits and will offer tax credits for caregivers.
His administration would focus on eliminating childhood depression, suicide and cancer by assembling “the best and brightest minds,” including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who endorsed Trump after dropping his independent presidential bid. Kennedy opposes vaccines but medical experts have said his anti-vaccine theories provide misinformation about the effects of vaccines.
Trump would build a missile defense shield over America and set a one-year prison term for anyone who burns or destroys the American flag. (The U.S. Supreme Court in 1989 ruled that burning a flag in protest is protected by the First Amendment.) He would defend religious liberty and restore free speech, protect the U.S. border and stop illegal immigration.
“The American Dream will come back,” he said.
Trump concluded by making a pitch to residents of Pennsylvania: “Every problem facing us can be solved. But now the fate of our nation is in your hands. It's in your hands. If we win Pennsylvania, we are gonna win the whole deal.”
The scene outside PPL Center
Hours before Trump took the stage, Hinchcliffe's remarks were foremost on the minds of protesters, many of whom were Latino and felt compelled to show up on their own or through the group, Make the Road Action Pennsylvania.
“This woke me up,” Enid Santiago, an unsuccessful state representative candidate from Allentown in 2022, told the crowd of about 100 protestors. She emphasized that people must vote on Tuesday.
“You can’t sit this one out,” Santiago said. “You have to put your mama in the car to take her for coffee after she votes.”
Tairy Pagan, 41, of Allentown, who was standing in the middle of Seventh Street outside the PPL Center, said, “I am a Latino and we need respect.”
Nodding in agreement, her mother Iris Irizarry said, “We are not garbage.”
Pagan said the Allentown Latino community is abuzz over Hinchcliffe’s comments and said there is no doubt in her mind that Latino Trump supporters will switch sides and vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Meanwhile, Trump fans who spoke to Armchair Lehigh Valley put the fault for Hinchcliffe’s remarks on the comedian – not Trump.
“He had nothing to do with it,” Cathy Gilbert of Bethlehem Township, who came to see Trump with her husband Roger.
She noted, “The place [Madison Square Garden] went silent because everyone was appalled.”
By and large, the city’s downtown was dominated by Trump supporters, who began arriving in Allentown hours ahead of the 3 p.m. entry time into the PPL Center – some by 6 a.m. and even earlier.
They were greeted by merchants hawking T-shirts, hats, mugs and sequined Trump jackets, a man donning a Trump mask and a group running through the crowd, waving flags and chanting, “The world needs Trump.”
There were a smattering of Harris and anti-Trump signs as well as a plane flying overhead with a banner, “He’s lost it.”
Among the Trump supporters were Johanna Rosario of Coplay, who works for her husband’s Allentown security company.
A former Biden supporter, Rosario said the high price of gas, groceries and rent is what led her to switch her allegiance to Trump. “Four years ago,” she said, “It wasn’t this bad.”
She said she is happy that Trump wants to give a tax credit to family caregivers but “iffy” on whether Trump should use the National Guard and the military on apprehending illegal immigrants who are criminals.
Hillell Sanabria, 31, of Coplay came with his father Joe to see Trump.
“Things were a lot better,” Hillell Sanabria said of Trump’s presidency. “Things were more affordable and your paycheck stretched farther.”
Joe Sanabria said Trump will bring the price of gas down. When asked how, he said, “Drill, baby, drill.” He brushed aside federal government reports showing that more oil is being pumped in the U.S. under Biden than it was when Trump was president, calling the statistics “fake news.”
Trump’s visits, including a rally in Schnecksville in April, highlight the Lehigh Valley’s importance to both parties in capturing Pennsylvania’s 19 Electoral College votes.
A poll by Franklin & Marshall College released last week shows Trump (49.6%) and Harris (49.3%) locked in a dead heat among likely voters in Pennsylvania.
A September Muhlenberg College/Morning Call poll of likely voters in the 7th Congressional District, which includes Lehigh and Northampton counties, showed Harris ahead 50% to Trump’s 47%. Less than 1% of those surveyed said they were undecided. With the margin of error, the race is considered a toss-up.
Harris, who became the Democratic nominee after Biden dropped out of the race in July, has yet to campaign in the Lehigh Valley. Her campaign opened an office on Hamilton Street in Allentown in August. Actor and activist Martin Sheen dropped by the office on Tuesday to promote Harris.
Gov. Tim Walz, her vice presidential running mate, was in the Lehigh Valley on Friday where he met with about 25 people at El Tipico, a Dominican restaurant in south Allentown.
His Friday visit follows a stop on Sept. 21 when he spoke at Freedom High School in Bethlehem Township. His wife Gwen Walz made a stop in Easton last week.