Donald Trump's campaign distances itself from controversial comments about the rally in New York

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Donald Trump and his allies struggled on Monday to contain the fallout from a campaign rally at New York's Madison Square Garden where one speaker called Puerto Rico a “floating trash heap” and another compared Kamala Harris to a prostitute with “pimps.”

Just over a week before the US presidential election, Trump's campaign team described Sunday's rally at the iconic Manhattan venue as the former Republican president's “closing statement” to an audience of thousands of enthusiastic supporters.

But a series of racist, misogynistic and vulgar comments during warm-ups overshadowed Trump's brief speech and prompted his campaign and Republican allies to distance themselves from the speakers to protect the presidential candidate from any negative consequences.

Tony Hinchcliffe, a comedian who opened the rally, called Puerto Rico a “floating island of trash” and made a number of other crude jokes about Hispanics, Jews, Palestinians and African Americans in his speech.

The former president has not yet commented on the remarks. But Trump campaign adviser Danielle Alvarez said Hinchliffe's joke about Puerto Ricans “does not reflect the views of President Trump or his campaign.”

Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the campaign, dismissed Hinchcliffe as a “comedian who made a tasteless joke.”

“I think it's sad that the media is picking up on a joke made by a comedian rather than the truths shared by the phenomenal speaker list we've had,” she told Fox News on Monday.

Rick Scott, the Republican senator from Florida who is himself in a tough re-election race, said Hinchcliffe's joke “bombed for a reason.”

“It's not funny and it's not true. Puerto Ricans are great people and great Americans!” Scott wrote in a post on

But Republicans' efforts to distance themselves from the comments did little to quell outrage from Democrats who claimed they were a reflection of Trump and those he surrounds himself with.

“As Latinos cast their votes in the voting booth, they should never forget the racism that Donald Trump seems only too happy to promote,” said Democratic New York Congressman Ritchie Torres, who represents part of the South Bronx and is of Puerto Rican descent.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic congresswoman from New York who is also of Puerto Rican descent, said the Trump campaign “invited this rhetoric onto their stage for a reason.”

“There was a chorus of speakers in this campaign for a reason. It was vetted and they knew exactly who was going to say what before they continued,” she added.

Puerto Rico is an unincorporated U.S. territory, and the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank, estimates that nearly 6 million Hispanics of Puerto Rican descent live in the U.S. — many of them in the seven swing states that are likely to decide who the White House wins House on November 5th.

The Financial Times poll tracker shows Trump and Harris virtually tied in all battlegrounds.

Hinchcliffe wasn't the only speaker on Sunday to spark outrage. David Rem, whom the Trump campaign described as the former president's “childhood friend,” called Harris “the devil” and “the Antichrist” as he waved a crucifix on stage.

Meanwhile, Grant Cardone, an investor, compared Harris, who would be the first female president of the United States if elected, to a prostitute and said the vice president and her “pimps” were “destroying our country.”