Days after a comedian described Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage” at Donald J. Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, the former president’s team seemed to manufacture a moment for him on Tuesday to pledge allegiance to the territory.
At a round-table discussion in the Philadelphia suburb of Drexel Hill, a retired occupational therapist seated at the table announced herself as Puerto Rican and told Mr. Trump that Puerto Ricans stood behind him.
“Puerto Rico stands behind you, and Puerto Rico loves you,” the woman, Maribel Valdez, told Mr. Trump, adding that she moved to the United States in 1981.
“I know it very well, and we helped you through a lot of bad storms,” Mr. Trump replied, adding, “No president has done more for Puerto Rico than I have.”
Many Puerto Ricans disagree.
As president in 2017, Mr. Trump publicly cast doubt on the death statistics from a hurricane, suggesting it was not as devastating as Puerto Rican officials claimed. He told aides back then that he did not want to give any more disaster relief money to the island because its leaders were corrupt.
And then, on Sunday night at Mr. Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden, the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, a warm-up act, told the “garbage” joke about Puerto Rico and the backlash quickly ensued on social media. The Trump campaign put out a rare defensive statement to distance Mr. Trump from the remark. Several Republican leaders and officials condemned the joke as offensive.
Earlier on Tuesday, Mr. Trump claimed to an ABC News reporter that he had not heard the Puerto Rico joke and knew nothing about it.
Behind the scenes, however, Mr. Trump’s team has been trying to neutralize the controversy.
Pennsylvania, which many strategists regard as the most crucial battleground state in this election, has a sizable population of Puerto Ricans. Later on Tuesday, Mr. Trump planned to fly to Allentown, a heavily Hispanic area of the state, to hold a rally.
The round-table event on Tuesday was hosted by Building America’s Future, an outside group that Elon Musk — Mr. Trump’s billionaire mega-backer — has sent money to. It is behind a handful of other dark-money groups airing ads in support of Mr. Trump.
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