NEW YORK — Donald Trump and his allies are full of bravado over his chances of victory in the closing days of the 2024 campaign. But there are signs, publicly and privately, that the former president and his team are worried that their opponents’ descriptions of him as a racist and a fascist may be breaking through to segments of voters.

That anxiety was clear after Trump’s six-hour event at Madison Square Garden in New York City, where the inflammatory speeches on Sunday included an opening act by a comedian known for a history of racist jokes who derided Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage” and talked about Black people carving watermelons.

The backlash among Puerto Rican celebrities and performers was instantaneous across social media, prompting the Trump campaign to issue a rare defensive statement distancing themselves from offensive comments. In a tight race, any constituency could be decisive and the sizable Puerto Rican community in the battleground state of Pennsylvania was on the minds of Trump allies.

Danielle Alvarez, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, said in a statement that the Puerto Rico joke “does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”

The Trump ethos has generally been to never apologize, never admit error and try to ignore controversy. Alvarez’s statement was a rare break from that tradition, reflecting a new concern that Trump risks reminding undecided voters of the dark tenor of his political movement in the closing stage of the 2024 race.

Some of Trump’s Republican allies, seeming to harbor similar misgivings, were quick to criticize the joke and the comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe, who made it.

David Urban, an informal Trump adviser with long ties to Pennsylvania, where there are large numbers of Puerto Rican voters, posted on the social platform X: “I thought he was unfunny and unfortunately offended many of our friends from Puerto Rico,” adding the hashtag “#TrumpLovesPR.”

The pushback also came from officials in Florida, where Trump’s campaign is based and some of his advisers have spent their careers.

Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar of south Florida condemned Hinchcliffe’s comments and said she was “disgusted,” adding that it did not reflect Republican values.

“Puerto Rico isn’t garbage, it’s home to fellow American citizens who have made tremendous contributions to our country,” Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida posted Monday on X. But he also made a point to note that “those weren’t Trump’s words. They were jokes by an insult comic who offends.”

Asked to comment on Trump allies’ showing worry that some of the attacks are breaking through, the Trump campaign did not immediately respond.

But Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, Trump’s running mate, dismissed concerns. “Maybe it’s a stupid, racist joke, as you said,” he told reporters Monday. “Maybe it’s not. I haven’t seen it.” But “we have to stop getting so offended at every little thing in the United States of America.”

Vice President Kamala Harris seized on the remarks, telling reporters at Joint Base Andrews on Monday morning that Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden offered fresh evidence of the former president’s divisiveness. Trump, she said, “fans the fuel of hate and division and that’s why people are exhausted with him.”

Harris, the Democratic nominee, is preparing to deliver a speech at the Ellipse near the White House that’s being cast as the closing argument of her three-month campaign, after she replaced President Joe Biden on the ticket.

It is the same spot where Trump delivered a speech to his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, calling on Congress to reject Biden’s electoral college votes. Hundreds of those supporters then marched to the Capitol and violently disrupted the certification.

Most on the Trump team believe the attacks on Trump over the Capitol riot and the fighting over whether he is racist cover ground that is already known by an electorate that has become numb to Trump’s provocations.

But few of Trump’s own events contained the kind of overt racism and misogyny the Madison Square Garden rally did.

“She’s a fake — I’m not here to invalidate her — she’s a fake, a fraud, she’s a pretender,” Grant Cardone, a businessman and internet figure, told the crowd. “Her and her pimp handlers will destroy our country.”

And some of Trump’s own close allies privately expressed concern that the headlines about the event came at a problematic moment, when the small group of persuadable voters across the country is tuning in to the election, and that it was a needless risk when people are already casting ballots during early voting in many states.

There have been other moments suggesting that the Trump team has concerns.

While Trump’s allies often publicly insist that voters have tuned out warnings about Trump’s authoritarianism, there were clear signs that the Trump campaign is concerned about statements from Trump’s former chief of staff, retired four-star Marine Gen. John Kelly. In interviews, he described his former boss as a fascist and claimed that Trump made complimentary statements about Adolf Hitler.