The Week: Garbage Litters the Home Stretch

• Trash talk over who is the biggest pile of garbage is the most fitting way to end this election.

• Donald Trump played Madison Square Garden in New York City, headlining a rally that featured dozens of speakers over the course of hours. Thousands of supporters overflowed into the surrounding streets. It was an amazing spectacle and a show of force in the largest media market in the closing weeks of the election, and it was also offensive at times. This time the controversy was caused not by what Trump himself said but by a joke describing Puerto Rico as “garbage,” from insult comic Tony Hinchcliffe. Democrats hoped the remark would flip votes, especially among the Puerto Rican population in Pennsylvania. They also portrayed the venue choice as a nod to a 1939 pro-Nazi rally at MSG, as if that were the only association of an arena that has hosted concerts, sporting championships, the first Ali–Frazier fight, and the Democratic conventions that nominated Jimmy Carter twice and Bill Clinton the first time. By this logic, in a few days we will be able to say that Kamala Harris carried New York, the site of a 1939 Nazi rally.

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• Trash talk over who is the biggest pile of garbage is the most fitting way to end this election.

• Donald Trump played Madison Square Garden in New York City, headlining a rally that featured dozens of speakers over the course of hours. Thousands of supporters overflowed into the surrounding streets. It was an amazing spectacle and a show of force in the largest media market in the closing weeks of the election, and it was also offensive at times. This time the controversy was caused not by what Trump himself said but by a joke describing Puerto Rico as “garbage,” from insult comic Tony Hinchcliffe. Democrats hoped the remark would flip votes, especially among the Puerto Rican population in Pennsylvania. They also portrayed the venue choice as a nod to a 1939 pro-Nazi rally at MSG, as if that were the only association of an arena that has hosted concerts, sporting championships, the first Ali–Frazier fight, and the Democratic conventions that nominated Jimmy Carter twice and Bill Clinton the first time. By this logic, in a few days we will be able to say that Kamala Harris carried New York, the site of a 1939 Nazi rally.