With just days remaining in the presidential election, Donald Trump held a mini-convention-style rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Based on the resulting media coverage, you'd think that the most newsworthy and electorally-relevant thing that happened at the event was an insult comic making a bad joke about Puerto Rico as a warm-up act in the pre-show. This was a serious problem for Trump, we were told, as it could turn Puerto Rican pockets of voters away from supporting him, especially in a key region of Pennsylvania. It could also have the spillover effect of offending Hispanics more broadly, they informed us. Democrats leaned heavily into this narrative, naturally, claiming that it was a big reason Kamala Harris had the "momentum" heading into Election Day.
At the time, I wrote that while it was a dumb idea to put a comedian whose schtick is literally insulting large groups of people onstage at a political gathering, but shoved back pretty forcefully against the deeply silly notion (in my view) that this was significant "news," or an election mover at all. Nevertheless, much of the political press treated it like it was the lead national story for several days. Now that the dust has settled, how is their insistent coverage looking? Well, it's looking like preposterous wish-casting. They were trying to convince themselves and others of a reality that simply did not exist -- and the people who were supposed to be very upset over a comedian's joke...just were not. Here's what happened in a heavily Puerto Rican county in Florida:
Osceola County in Florida, about which I have written extensively, broke for Biden by +14. It has a very large Puerto Rican population.
— Kristen Soltis Anderson (@KSoltisAnderson) November 6, 2024
With 85% in, it just flipped red on the map with Trump up by .7 points. pic.twitter.com/oDq1Sm2t3H
Trump flipped it by a point-and-a-half, once all the votes were tabulated. And this is what happened in that aforementioned part of battleground Pennsylvania:
As predicted, Puerto Rican areas swing the most towards Trump.
— Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) November 9, 2024
Not only no MSG effect, they move in the opposite direction. https://t.co/rsA3KqGSlC
And in Puerto Rico itself:
Republican Jenniffer González-Colón, Puerto Rico's congresswoman since 2017, wins the gubernatorial election.
— Dennis Lennox (@dennislennox) November 6, 2024
🔴 Republican GAIN#PuertoRicohttps://t.co/ScClGUOCwe https://t.co/jgmpR3O9q4
As for the claimed "momentum" for Harris -- with Trump's campaign reportedly faltering, and the candidate in "meltdown" over the final days -- how did that turn out?
The media turned an insult comic’s bad joke into THE national story for like three days in the final week or so of the election. They were insistently telling themselves and their fellow partisans a story they wanted to be true, but had no basis in reality: pic.twitter.com/NBi2mJ9UZ1
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) November 6, 2024
Trump won voters who made their decision in the final week of the campaign by 12 percentage points. They were wrong about everything. And the 'Nazi' rally, or whatever, was just as diverse as Trump's historic victory coalition. Many journalists were emphasizing some stupid joke over major developments like the worst jobs report in four years, and the terrorist attack in Chicago by a Harris-era illegal immigrant. They talked incessantly about what they hoped would matter, rather than what actually mattered to voters. They put their fist on the scale, then learned that their biased interference was an exercise in impotence. I'll leave you with a few statistics and factoids about the election result so many members of the 'news' media tried hard to prevent:
JUST IN: Young women under 30 shifted 11 points toward Trump in 2024 - NBC
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 9, 2024
On presidential level, AOC's district had a nearly 24 point swing to Trump from 2020. https://t.co/kEfppGkqx7
— Andy Kaczynski (@KFILE) November 9, 2024
I guess I hadn’t thought of it until seeing this, but Donald Trump has received the most votes for president (total) in United States history. https://t.co/orwHlSndpM
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) November 9, 2024
Yes, in the history of the United States of America, Donald Trump has received more combined votes for president than anyone else, ever. And here's one journalist -- Jan Crawford of CBS News, who also distinguished herself in another way recently -- who seems to get it:
I guess I hadn’t thought of it until seeing this, but Donald Trump has received the most votes for president (total) in United States history. https://t.co/orwHlSndpM
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) November 9, 2024
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