Video shows a Brazilian demonstration, not Puerto Ricans responding to a racist Trump rally joke

At former President Donald Trump’s recent campaign rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City, comedian Tony Hinchliffe made racist jokes, including calling Puerto Rico an "island of garbage."

The crack drew immediate blowback. Bad Bunny, a Puerto Rican rapper and global star, encouraged Puerto Ricans to vote for Trump’s rival in the 2024 presidential election, Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. 

But a video some social media users are celebrating as a display of Puerto Rico's strength predates the Oct. 27 Madison Square Garden rally. It was also filmed in another country. 

"Puerto Rico response today," an Oct. 29 YouTube video said, adding three blue wave emojis signifying Democratic support. It featured an image from a video that showed a street crowded with people walking, wearing blue shirts and waving blue flags. 

An Oct. 30 YouTube video also framed the protest as a Puerto Rican response, saying in Spanish, "No basura aqui. Son mucho personas azul," meaning, "No trash here. There are many blue people."

"They’re marching in Puerto Rico," an Oct. 29 Threads post said. It was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

The videos included a TikTok handle that led us to where the footage first appeared: an Oct. 5 TikTok post. Here, too, users showed their support for Puerto Rico in comments left after Trump’s rally. 

"NOW THIS IS HOW YOU RESPOND," an Oct. 29 comment said. 

"KAMALA PRESIDENT," an Oct. 30 comment said. 

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Of course, the video doesn’t show Puerto Ricans responding to Trump’s rally because it was posted three weeks before the event happened. And it shows people in Brazil, not Puerto Rico. 

The license plate on the car in the video is Brazilian and says "Brasil." The video’s narrator is speaking in Portuguese, the primary language of most Brazilians. The blue flags people are waving are related to Brazil’s local elections, which started the following day. And a woman can be seen wearing a shirt with the "MDB" logo for Brazil’s Brazilian Democratic Movement party. 

On Oct. 30, the TikTok account that first shared the video posted election results showing Zé Maria Tapajós, an MDB mayoral candidate, was elected mayor of Santarém, Brazil. Videos posted Oct. 5 on Tapajós’ Instagram page showed similar scenes to the one shared in the Oct. 5 TikTok video that’s now being mischaracterized on social media. 

We rate claims this video shows Puerto Ricans responding to a racist joke told at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally False.

PolitiFact Staff Writer Maria Briceño contributed to this report.