Carmen Yulín Cruz’s cellphone started buzzing on Sunday while she was at the airport in Connecticut, waiting for a flight to Puerto Rico. A standup comic at former President Donald J. Trump’s rally in New York had called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”

As video clips of the comic, Tony Hinchcliffe, began flashing on airport televisions, fellow Puerto Ricans preparing to board their flight began erupting, Ms. Cruz said.

“People were asking me, ‘Mira, Yulín, what is this guy saying?’ — only in more colorful language,” Ms. Cruz, the former mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico’s capital, said on Monday. “And I said: ‘Well, this isn’t the first time. Let’s not be surprised.’”

As president, Mr. Trump fought bitterly with Ms. Cruz and other Puerto Rican leaders, and resisted sending billions of dollars in aid after the territory was ravaged by back-to-back hurricanes in 2017. He made angry comments on social media and tossed paper towels at Puerto Ricans during a visit that few, if any, have forgotten. He even wondered privately if the United States could sell the island.

In 2019, Mr. Trump decried local leaders as “grossly incompetent.” A year later, while running for re-election, he tried to portray himself as the “best thing that ever happened” to the island. The Republican Party platform no longer mentions statehood for Puerto Rico, a position the party had held before Mr. Trump’s relationship with the island soured.

While his campaign distanced itself from Mr. Hinchcliffe’s joke, saying it did not reflect Mr. Trump’s views, Mr. Trump himself has not apologized.

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