Donald Trump's closing argument: leaning into the extreme rhetoric

On Sunday afternoon, to kick off the last full week of the 2024 presidential campaign, thousands of people lined up under a screen several stories high with the image of former President Donald Trump.

They were waiting outside New York's Madison Square Garden where Trump was holding a campaign rally.

It was a homecoming of sorts for the man who has portrayed himself as the quintessential New Yorker.

The headliner took the stage two hours after he was scheduled to, and before that...more than two dozen others spoke.

Many leaned into racist, misogynistic and vulgar rhetoric, like comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who now famously referred to Puerto Rico as a "floating pile of garbage"

There was intense backlash, and a Trump campaign advisor later put out a statement distancing the former President from Hinchcliff's remarks.

But Hinchcliffe wasn't the only speaker who used incendiary language during the rally Sunday night.

You're reading the Consider This newsletter, which unpacks one major news story each day. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox, and listen to more from the Consider This podcast.

More key voices at the event

Trump's childhood friend David Rem referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as the devil, calling her the "antichrist."

And Stephen Miller, a policy advisor in the Trump White House and current senior campaign advisor underscored the former President's anti-immigrant message, saying "America is for Americans and Americans only."

Other speakers included Elon Musk, Hulk Hogan, New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik and Phil McGraw – better known as Dr. Phil.

Finally, more than four hours into the program, Trump took the stage and spoke for another 78 minutes – repeating many of the themes his warm up acts had touched on, promising some of the following:

• Launching the "largest deportation program in American history to get these criminals
  out"
• Getting critical race theory and "transgender insanity the hell out of our schools"
  

Trump referred to his opponent as a "train wreck," and promised the following: "This election is a choice between whether we will have four more years of gross incompetence and failure or whether we will begin the four greatest years in the history of our country."

Closing up his campaign.

The rhetoric from this rally has generated plenty of conversation online for the fate of Trump's campaign. How was it received?

NPR political correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben says the fallout following the Puerto Rico comment was immediate, starting before the rally was even over.

"You had New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, who were doing an online event for the Harris campaign already. They played that clip and reacted with disgust as they heard it. Not only that, but pretty immediately, the Harris campaign itself quickly retweeted a clip"

Republican politicians, including Florida Sen. Rick Scott and Congressman Carlos Gimenez, also criticized that joke.

"And the Trump campaign got the message in a statement late last night. The campaign's senior adviser, Danielle Alvarez, said, 'This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign,'" added Kurtlzeben.

So, does she expect the campaign to be affected by this?

"What's been remarkable in this absolutely wild election year is that almost nothing has shifted the polls, aside from the Democrats swapping candidates. Besides that, it's been remarkably stable: assassination attempts, Trump saying immigrants are vermin poisoning the blood of the nation...Nothing seems to budge."

And while it is unusual for the Trump campaign to backtrack on just about anything, it might be too close to say if it could impact the final result of the election.