Puerto Ricans are all US citizens, they can’t be “illegals” so I don’t think that logic applies in this case. If the comedian had similarly insulted Dominican Republic or Mexico or Venezuela, then what you describe would be the calculus.
In this case, I think all that matters is (1) how much PR republicans identify the comments with Trump versus with the “comedian” who said them, and (2) how much PR republicans can just do the cognitive dissonance thing Trump’s evangelical supporters do (many of whom are Puerto Rican).
Puerto Ricans are all US citizens, they can’t be “illegals” so I don’t think that logic applies in this case. If the comedian had similarly insulted Dominican Republic or Mexico or Venezuela, then what you describe would be the calculus.
In this case, I think all that matters is (1) how much PR republicans identify the comments with Trump versus with the “comedian” who said them, and (2) how much PR republicans can just do the cognitive dissonance thing Trump’s evangelical supporters do (many of whom are Puerto Rican).