Former US President and Republican nominee Donald Trump distanced himself Monday from criticism comparing his rally in New York City over the weekend to a 1939 gathering of Nazis at that same venue, according to news outlets.
"I'm not a Nazi," Trump said at a rally in Atlanta, Georgia. "I'm the opposite of a Nazi."
Trump's defense of himself came after Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, has constantly called him a fascist and her Democratic supporters have compared him to Adolf Hitler, the fascist dictator of Germany who carried out the genocide of six million Jews during World War II.
In addition, Trump's former chief of staff, John Kelly, told The New York Times that Trump reportedly said that "Hitler did some good things" and that the former president allegedly wanted "the kind of generals Hitler had," even though the Trump campaign denied those remarks.
"Kamala's now doing something much worse than what she was talking about," said Trump. "The newest line from Kamala and her campaign is that anyone who isn't voting for her is a Nazi."
Trump told the crowd that his father taught him to never say the word "Nazi."
"He used to always say: 'Never use the word Nazi. Never use that word,' And he'd say: 'Never use the word Hitler. Don't use that word,'" Trump recalled. "It's like, I don't even know why-'don't use that word'-And then I understood."
"They use that word-really, it's both words-'He's Hitler.' And then they say 'He's a Nazi.'"
The negative fallout from Trump's New York rally resonated Monday after one of his speakers, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, made racist and derogatory remarks about Puerto Ricans, calling the American territory of Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage."
Harris and her campaign used the disparaging comments as an opportunity to condemn Trump and Republicans for discriminating against the Puerto Rican community, releasing a political ad that criticized Trump for disrespecting Puerto Rico by throwing paper towels to residents at a hurricane relief center after the island was devastated by Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017.
"I will never forget what Donald Trump did. He abandoned the island and offered nothing more than paper towels and insults. Puerto Ricans deserve better," Harris says in the ad, after a clip of Hinchcliffe's comment is played. "As president, I will always fight for you and your families. And together, we can chart a new way forward."
The campaign ad is being run in key battleground states and will target Latino voters, which is extremely important in the state of Pennsylvania, where a half-million residents of Puerto Rican descent live.
The latest polls released Monday show Trump leading by a razor thin margin of 47.9% to Harris's 47.6% in Pennsylvania, according to polling tracker 538, which averages all of the major presidential polls across the United States.
Even though the Trump campaign has distanced itself from Hinchcliffe's comments, telling CNN that the comedian's joke "does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign," many prominent Puerto Rican groups in Pennsylvania are not seeing it that way.
Trump has a planned campaign rally Tuesday in Allentown, which is a majority Latino city with one of the largest Puerto Rican populations in Pennsylvania.
"It's spreading like wildfire through the community," said Norberto Dominguez, a precinct captain with the local Democratic party in Allentown, in an interview with the online news service Politico, referring to the derogatory remarks about Puerto Ricans made at Trump's New York rally.
"It's not the smartest thing to do, to insult people-a large group of voters here in a swing state-and then go to their home asking for votes," Dominguez added.
