Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe used crass language in joking that Latinos “love making babies” and called the Caribbean US territory of Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”.
Puerto Rican singer Ricky Martin posted a clip of the comments on his Instagram and wrote, in Spanish, “This is what they think of us.”
Danielle Alvarez, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, told Reuters that the joke about Puerto Rico “does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign”.
While Puerto Ricans are US citizens, residents of the island cannot vote in US general elections.
However, millions of Puerto Ricans who have moved to the mainland United States can vote, and there is a large community in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.
Harris earlier on Sunday visited a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia, the largest city in Pennsylvania. She posted a video on social media promising to “invest in Puerto Rico’s future” as president.
Harris’s campaign in an email said the Madison Square Garden rally was “mirroring the same dangerously divisive and demeaning message” as Trump.
Trump’s 2016 presidential opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, has accused him of “re-enacting” a pro-Nazi rally that was held at Madison Square Garden in 1939 on the eve of World War II.
Trump’s critics have long accused him of empowering white supremacists with dehumanising and racist rhetoric.
Trump rejected the comparison to the 1930s. “This is called Make America Great Again, that’s all this is,” he said on Friday.
“Today this is Donald Trump’s house,” said the wrestler Hulk Hogan in a speech at the New York event on Sunday, later rejecting accusations that Trump is a fascist: “I don’t see any Nazis in here.”
