Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump reiterated his tough stance on immigration during an hour-long appearance at his Florida country club on Tuesday, even as Democrats pressed sharply to the racist rhetoric his campaign and its allies used to describe Latinos in the final week of the presidential race. Speaking at Mar-a-Lago, the former president addressed the criticism his protest at Madison Square Garden on Sunday received including comparisons to the 1939 Nazi rally American commune in the same building  but did not directly address the uproar caused by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s jokes targeting Puerto Rican immigrants and Latinos.

Trump sought to change the narrative that followed the New York protests, calling the atmosphere “an absolute love fest.” The former president continued to promote his uncompromising stance on immigration, which was a major focus of his campaign, using racist language to describe the issue. Trump repeated the debunked claim that Aurora, Colorado, had been overrun by Venezuelan cartels and claimed, without evidence, that a “minimum” of 325,000 migrant children had been brought into the country as ” slavery or sexual slavery”.