Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally recalls notorious election-losing religious slur

(RNS) — History may not repeat itself, but sometimes it conjures up the eeriest of precedents.

It’s not inappropriate to compare presidential contender Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan on Sunday (Oct. 27) to the Nazi rally that took place at the Garden’s earlier location at 49th Street in 1939, 85 years and eight months before Trump’s Sunday get-together. But a closer correlation is with what happened at a Republican presidential rally that took place across from the original Madison Square Garden exactly 140 years ago, on Oct. 28, 1884.

That year the candidate was GOP Sen. James G. Blaine, who addressed a crowd of hundreds of Protestant clergy, gathered at Manhattan’s old Fifth Avenue Hotel, a white marble palace that sat between 23rd and 24th streets diagonally across from the first Madison Square Garden. The audience was chosen so as to dramatize the immorality of Grover Cleveland, Blaine’s Democratic opponent, in fathering an illegitimate child.

Not that Blaine himself was free from scandal. His misbehavior, however, was financial, not sexual. To the GOP chant, “Ma, Ma, Where’s My Pa?” the Democrats rejoined, “Blaine! Blaine! James G. Blaine! The Continental Liar from the State of Maine!”

Among Blaine’s eulogists at the hotel gathering was a Presbyterian minister named Samuel D. Burchard, a staunch Unionist during the Civil War and a vigorous opponent of saloons who was chosen to be presiding officer because he was the oldest cleric present. Addressing the candidate, he said, “We are Republicans, and don’t propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party of rum, Romanism, and rebellion. We are loyal to our flag. We are loyal to you.”

“Did you get that?” the AP reporter in the room asked one of his stenographers. “Bet your life — the old fool,” came the reply.

Boom! Within days, “rum, Romanism, and rebellion” was the talk of the nation.

Blaine, who had Catholic relatives, had been working hard to gain the support of Catholic voters, whose traditional Democratic allegiance was slipping in the Empire State. A decade earlier he had sponsored an unsuccessful amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would have banned public funding for Catholic schools. His belated effort to make amends for Burchard’s remark did little to absolve his campaign of the charge of anti-Catholicism. 

Estimates are that the uproar cost him between 30,000 and 50,000 votes in New York. On election day, Cleveland won the state by just 1,049 votes out of over 1 million cast, and with it the election.

Tony Hinchcliffe arrives to speak before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Which, of course, brings us to comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s crack at Sunday’s Trump rally: “I don’t know if you guys heard this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yeah. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”

Oops! Within hours, Puerto Rico’s superstar entertainers — Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin — had communicated their displeasure to their 300 million social media followers. Bad Bunny also joined the other two in announcing his support for Kamala Harris.

This elicited a quick can’t-you-take-a-joke from Hinchcliffe, denunciations by various Republican officials and criticism from the Trump campaign. But so far, the candidate, like Blaine before him, has failed to disavow the crack. Given his paper towel tossing and denial of billions of dollars to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017, there’s ample reason to think that he agrees with Hinchcliffe.

In 2024 it’s not New York but Pennsylvania that will likely determine who becomes our next president. Among Pennsylvania’s 615,000 Latinos, half are Puerto Rican, and both Trump and Kamala Harris have been working hard for their support, which has been slipping toward the GOP. A swing of a few thousand votes could make the difference this time around.

After the 1884 election, Blaine blamed his loss on “an ass in the shape of a preacher.” If Donald Trump fails to recapture the presidency because of the Puerto Rican vote in Pennsylvania, his words about Hinchcliffe will no doubt be harsher. As for “floating island of garbage,” it will join “rum, Romanism, and rebellion” in the annals of American political infamy.