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‘Train has left the station’: Radio host says Trump rally ended chances with these voters

Former President Donald Trump is planning an event in Pennsylvania with prominent Puerto Rican supporters amid fallout from Puerto Rico being called a "floating island of garbage" at his weekend rally in Madison Square Garden.
But Victor Martinez, owner of the La Mega radio station, told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace that it's too late for Trump — he has done irreparable damage.
"He never backs down. He never apologizes," said Wallace. "Are you expecting him to apologize tonight for his political purpose? And do you think people will buy it?"
"Well, No. 1: No. I don't expect him to apologize," said Martinez. "And I'm glad you asked that question because I specifically asked my audience this morning that. I told my audience, 'Ok, so if all of a sudden Trump finds God and decides that he wants to apologize or take back or distance himself from those comments, would it be okay? Would you take it?' Audience overwhelmingly said, 'No, too late.' Some of them even said the train has left the station. He could have done it Sunday. He could have done it Monday. He could have done it this morning. And yet, he didn't."
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One listener in particular intrigued Martinez.
"She called and she said, I follow Trump on Truth Social. And he found time yesterday at 2:00 — she was very specific, at 2:00 to go to Truth Social and criticize Fox News for having Michelle Obama on the air, but yet he hasn't found time to go to Truth Social and distance himself or apologize for what happened in his rally. So, those are the types of comments that I'm getting from the audience who obviously are now very engaged."
And it's not just his listeners, Martinez added — Puerto Rican celebrities and influencers are running with it at this point.
"Major Puerto Rican superstar Don Omar, who has been part of the 'Fast and Furious' movies and very well-known artist, just posted on his social media, 'Puerto Rico is my homeland and my identity. Today, more than ever, I raise my island's flag in pride. It's time to turn the page. We are not going back.' Supporting Kamala Harris. And another piece of breaking news. Jenniffer Gonzalez, the Puerto Rico representative in Washington and now also candidate for governor in Puerto Rico, a strong Trump supporter, just now in Puerto Rico television, said that these comments will cost Donald Trump in the states where Puerto Ricans live."
Watch the video below or at the link here.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
The View host heavily bleeped as she unleashes profane tirade against Trump rally joke

"The View's" co-host Ana Navarro was incensed after a comedian at Donald Trump's rally in New York's Madison Square Garden called Puerto Rico a "floating pile of garbage" — and on Monday she unleashed.
Navarro, an immigrant from Nicaragua and longtime Republican strategist, joined with her Puerto Rican colleague Sunny Hostin in bashing Trump and his campaign for what they said was embracing racism.
"This Puerto Rican has something to say about the island that I love, where my family is from," Hostin began. "Puerto Rico is trash? We are Americans, Donald Trump. Americans. We voluntarily serve disproportionately highly in the military while you have bone spurs, and we vote."
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She rattled off the high number of Puerto Ricans who live in swing states around the country and highlighted their possible impact.
"We don't like what was said about Puerto Rico, and we know how to take the trash out, Donald Trump," Hostin continued. "Trash that has been collecting since 2016, and that's you, Donald Trump. And fellow Puerto Ricans, trash collection day is November 5, 2024. Don't forget it."
But it was a fuming Navarro who unleashed her full force. She noted that the same comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe, didn't just focus on Latinos but attacked Black Americans, too.
She brought up some of Trump's racist behavior, such as asking for the death penalty for the now exonerated men who were accused of a Central Park sexual assault.
"If Trump getting investigated for refusing to rent to Black people wasn't enough for you, if Trump promoting a racist trope against the first Black president with a birtherist ... enough for you," Navarro continued, her comments partially muted by censors.
She continued with her list of the greatest hits of Trump's racism, such as "calling immigrants vermin and people poisoning the blood of this country."
"If Trump saying immigrants have made this country into the trash can of the world wasn't enough for you, then maybe, just maybe, this comedian hand-picked, chosen, vetted by the Trump campaign because he reflects what Trump has said his entire lifetime," Navarro said.
Trump lawyers use hurricane in request to delay Jack Smith response

Donald Trump's lawyers have asked for an extension of their filing deadlines to respond to special counsel Jack Smith's latest motion due to a hurricane in Florida.
The former president's attorneys argued that they were displaced and disrupted when Hurricane Milton made landfall earlier this month near Sarasota, so they asked the court to extend their deadlines to respond to the special counsel's 165-page immunity motion until December.
"Needless to say, questions of Presidential immunity, and immunity-related discovery, are complex and require substantial resources to consider and brief, as the Special Counsel’s own enormous submission demonstrates," defense attorneys wrote.
"Despite difficulties, defense counsel have made multiple filings this month in good faith, including a lengthy proposed motion to dismiss concerning a complex and evolving area of the law, Doc. 270, all while continuing to draft the Response and Motion to Compel as quickly as able."
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"The requested extensions will ensure counsel have sufficient and reasonable time to finish this important work, while not causing any significant delay to the overall progress of this case," they added.
Trump's attorneys asked for a Nov. 7 deadline for their response to be extended until Dec. 5 and a Nov. 21 deadline for another filing to be reset to Dec. 19.
The former president's trial for election subversion in the District of Columbia has been delayed by his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which granted him broad presidential immunity in a July ruling. The special counsel filed an amended indictment that removed some charges that could be considered official acts that would be covered by the immunity.
Mowed down by cars, European hedgehog numbers shrinking

The Western European hedgehog -- the prickly, nocturnal critter people love to encounter in the garden -- is in decline, mowed down by cars as its shrinking habitat forces it to move ever closer to humans.
An updated Red List of Threatened Species published Monday at the UN's COP16 biodiversity summit in Cali, Colombia, downgraded the hedgehog's status from "least concern" to "near threatened."
The next level on the list kept by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), is "vulnerable," then "endangered."
The European hedgehog, expert Sophie Rasmussen told AFP, "is very close to being 'vulnerable,' and it will likely go into that category the next time we evaluate it."
Numbers of the tiny mammal have plunged by more than half its host countries including Britain, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria.
The estimated decline was between 35 and 40 percent of populations measured in Britain, Sweden and Norway in the last decade or so, said Rasmussen, a researcher with the University of Oxford's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit.
In the Netherlands, it is already considered endangered.
The main killer of hedgehogs is cars -- which the animals encounter more and more as they lose their natural habitat to human expansion.
"Humans are the worst enemies of hedgehogs," said Rasmussen.
- 'Hedgehog highways' -
To protect itself from predators such as badgers, foxes and owls at night, the hedgehog uses the strategy of standing completely still as it assesses the threat.
If the menace approaches, it runs as far as its little legs can carry it. But if there is no time, it rolls up into a ball -- protected by as many as 8,000 spines, sharp to the touch.
"In front of a car, it is not a really good strategy," Rasmussen, who calls herself Dr Hedgehog and speaks with great passion about the spiky mammals, told AFP in a video interview from Lejre in Denmark.
Other threats include pesticides used by farmers and gardeners, and a decline in the insects that make up a large part of the hedgehog's diet.
Hedgehogs generally live for about two years, though some as old as nine or 12 have been documented.
They can start breeding from around 12 months of age, usually giving birth to three or five hoglets at a time.
"This means that many hedgehogs get to breed once, or twice perhaps if they're lucky, on average before they die," said Rasmussen -- just enough "to keep the population going at some level."
Soon, this may not be enough.
Rasmussen, whose research went into the Red List update, said the fight to save hedgehogs "is actually going to take place in people's gardens" as forests and other wild areas are torn down.
She suggested people build "hedgehog highways" -- basically a CD-sized hole in the outer fence to allow the animals to get in off the road, with bowls of water and nesting materials such as garden waste placed inside.
"The best thing you can do is to let your garden grow wild to attract... all the natural food items of the hedgehog" such as insects, worms, snails and slugs," said Rasmussen.
She concedes "it's not like the world is going to end tomorrow if the hedgehogs are not there."
However, "for a species so popular and so loved, can we really accept the fact that we are causing their extinction?
"And if we let it get so bad with a species we actually really care about, what about all the species we don't care about?"
The new, updated Red List has evaluated 166,061 species of plants and animals in all, of which 46,337 -- more than a quarter -- are threatened with extinction.
Trump’s own campaign disavows comment from speaker at ex-president’s controversial rally

Donald Trump's own campaign on Sunday distanced itself from a comment made by a speaker at the former president's controversial rally at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Trump spoke on Sunday at the famous New York venue, where he followed Donald Trump Jr., Elon Musk, and other MAGA surrogates. Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe also spoke before the ex-president.
In his comments, Hinchcliffe actually referred to Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage."
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The comment caused pushback even from Trump's biggest elected allies, such as Rick Scott, a senator from Florida.
Now, Trump's campaign has issued a response, according to NBC's campaign embed Alec Hernández.
“This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign,” said senior advisor Danielle Alvarez, according to Hernández's reporting.
National security attorney Bradley P. Moss responded to that statement from the campaign, saying simply, "It absolutely does."
‘Bigger than that’: Trump’s latest move labeled an ‘in-kind contribution to Kamala Harris’

Donald Trump's latest campaign stunt is an "in-kind contribution" to Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign, a strategist said Sunday.
Trump over the weekend hosted a controversial rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, a move some say was meant to mirror a historical gathering of Nazis in 1939. The content of the event was similarly mired in controversy, with one speaker making a comment that was later disavowed by Trump's campaign as well as his biggest elected allies.
The controversy led Trump-supporting Meghan McCain, a political commentator and the daughter of legendary Republican lawmaker John McCain, to say the event could actually "backfire" and cost Trump the 2024 election.
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Appearing on CNN, Democratic strategist Maria Cardona had a similar take on the impact of the event.
Cardona pointed out that the part of the event that has Republicans scrambling, a joke referring to Puerto Rico as an island of "garbage," will be considered by Pennsylvanians of Puerto Rican descent.
"But this is actually bigger than that," Cardona said.
"I think what it does is it allows Americans to see the stark contrast that is exactly what Vice President Kamala Harris has been talking about these last couple of weeks and what she is going to close on," she added. "So I have to thank Donald Trump and all of the misogynistic, racist, xenophobic, white supremacist speakers that he had at his rally because they are underscoring that Vice President Kamala Harris is going to be focused on the future, is going to be focused on solutions, is going to be focused on her to do list for Americans while Donald Trump, if he gets to the Oval Office, he's going to be focused on retribution."
In concluding her comments, Cardona said, "I think a rally like today is an in-kind contribution to the Kamala Harris, Tim Walz campaign."

