Armando Tinoco
Sunny Hostin is not here for Donald Trump‘s “gaslighting” and called him out on The View following his garbage truck stunt.
The ABC talk show tackled Trump’s latest political stunt, which involved riding in a garbage truck and wearing reflective gear to his latest rally.
“Stop trying to co-opt this argument that he is now the victim. It’s gaslighting to the tenth degree,” Hostin said on the Thursday, October 31 episode while wearing a top that said, Proud Puerto Rican. “I hope that Americans recognize what’s happening.”
Trump’s political stunt is an attempt to change the discourse in the fallout of his Madison Square Garden rally last weekend when comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made a disgraceful “joke” referring to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”
In the aftermath of the fallout, U.S. President Joe Biden denounced the “demonization of Latinos” by people associated with the Trump campaign like Hinchcliffe.
“The Puerto Rican that I know, the Puerto Rico where I’m … in my home state of Delaware. They’re good, decent honorable people,” Biden said on a call with the Hispanic advocacy group Voto Latino. “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American. It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been.”
Biden’s words were twisted and his detractors took the opportunity to say he was calling people voting for Trump “garbage.” The White House said that Biden’s reference to “supporters” was to “supporter’s,” referring to Hinchcliffe.
Biden himself has since clarified the comment with a post on X where he said he was referring “to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage—which is the only word I can think of to describe it.”
Trump and his campaign took this mixup to redirect the conversation and “own” the term, which he explained at his rally.
“One of my people came in and said, ‘Sir, you know the word garbage is the hottest thing right now,’” Trump said at his rally when he was approached to drive a garbage truck.
On The View, Hostin reminded viewers that Trump “owns that language. He owns that rhetoric because he is the one that introduced it. He is the one that at his rally had a comedian talking about Puerto Rico being an island of garbage.”
The show then showed clips of Trump referring to America as a garbage can.
In recent rallies, Trump has repeatedly referred to America as “a garbage can.” In a Pennsylvania appearance on Tuesday, October 29, while delivering anti-immigration remarks, Trump claimed crime in Venezuela is down “because their criminals are taken into the United States of America, it’s like we’re a giant garbage can, that’s what they treat us like.”
Watch The View discuss Donald Trump and the garbage truck below.