Obama criticizes comic's Puerto Rico remarks at Trump's rally

The Trump campaign debated internally on whether to even put out a statement addressing the comments made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at Trump’s Sunday Madison Square Garden rally, multiple sources familiar with the discussions told ABC News.

Sources involved in the planning of the rally also told ABC News that all speakers were asked to submit drafts of their speeches so they could be loaded into the teleprompter. ABC News was told Hinchcliffe's speech originally had a joke labeling Vice President Kamala Harris with a vulgarity, but the comment was flagged by campaign staff who asked for it to be removed.

Those sources who reviewed the speech insist that while some of Hinchcliffe’s jokes remained in the speech, others including his line calling Puerto Rico "a floating island of garbage" were ad-libbed.

The Trump campaign declined to comment.

-ABC News’ Rachel Scott, John Santucci and Katherine Faulders

At a faith-focused campaign event on Monday, Trump touted his Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday as a “great rally” and bragged about his “soft foul” language, saying “a little spice” is necessary.

Several speakers at the Sunday rally faced backlash for making racist and other controversial comments.

Trump quipped that Rev. Franklin Graham had told him he should stop using so much foul language.

“’Mr. President, it's Franklin Graham, and I just want to tell you, I love what you do, I love what you say. I love your stories. I think they're great, and keep telling them, but they'd be even better if you wouldn't use foul language,’” Trump recounted his exchange with Graham to laughs.

“So I thought about it, and I said, ‘I'm going to try.’ And I did try, and I'm not sure, I'm not sure I'd make the emphasis quite as good. I've been pretty good about it, but I'm not sure,” Trump said. “Everyone said, ‘Well, you need a little bit of something, a little spice, a little spice to juice them up a little bit.’ But I got that letter, and I sort of laughed. I said, ‘I'm not sure you're right about this.’”

“And sometimes I'll use a little bit not hard, not hard foul, but soft foul. We call it soft foul, but, you know, to emphasize something about somebody’s abilities, or whatever I might be talking about,” Trump said.

-ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa, Kelsey Walsh and Soorin Kim

Trump's running mate was pressed by reporters while campaigning in Wisconsin to weigh in on the controversy caused by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at Trump's Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday.

JD Vance claimed he heard about the comments but didn’t see them. Vance, when asked if the racist jokes were the right tone for the Trump campaign's final argument, pivoted to attacking Harris, claiming her closing pitch is “essentially [was saying] that all of Donald Trump's voters are Nazis and you should get really pissed off about a comedian telling a joke. That is not the message of a winning campaign. And, most importantly, it's not the message of a person who's fit to be the president of the United States of America," Vance said.

"Maybe it's a stupid racist joke as you said, maybe it's not. I haven't seen it," Vance said. "I'm not going to comment on the specifics of the joke, but I think that we have to stop getting so offended at every little thing in the United States of America. I'm just, I'm so over it."

-ABC News' Hannah Demissie

In a visit to a semiconductor facility in central Michigan, Harris praised the manufacturing work happening there and noted the importance of outpacing China.

“Look, we’ve got to win the competition for the 21st century,” she said at Hemlock Semiconductor in Saginaw. “We’re not going to have China beat us in the competition for the 21st century, and that’s about, then, doing the work that Corning is going to be doing about manufacturing of these solar panels, together with the work that you are doing here.”

Harris cited the CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act as ways she has tried to boost America’s manufacturing power.

“I want to thank you all for what you're doing here, as a great example of what was a vision that we had -- the president and I and Congressman -- we're going to create a meaningful public investment in America's private industries through the CHIPS act, through the Inflation Reduction Act, and we're going to infuse it with billions of dollars, knowing that if we do that, as that old saying comes, if you build it, they will come,” she said.

Harris used the opportunity to slam Trump for “how he’d get rid of the CHIPS Act.” Trump criticized the bipartisan law while on Joe Rogan's podcast last week.

-ABC News' Will McDuffie