There’s never a good time for a presidential campaign to host a rally filled with racist and depraved rhetoric, but Donald Trump’s ugly gathering at Madison Square Garden on Sunday was especially ill timed.

Not only did the former president headline a hate rally nine days before Election Day, but his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, spent the hours leading up to Trump’s event in Philadelphia reaching out to Pennsylvania’s sizable Puerto Rican population. It was also the day when the Democratic nominee unveiled new details of her plan to bring economic opportunities to Puerto Rico, while simultaneously reminding the community of her Republican opponent’s awful record when it comes to the island.

The New York Times reported that Harris, also on Sunday afternoon, released a video message specifically targeted to Puerto Rican voters: “The video was widely shared, and the Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny posted it on Instagram. He is one of the biggest recording artists in the world and among the most influential Latino artists. Other celebrities with Puerto Rican backgrounds also shared the video, including Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin.”

It was against that backdrop that Trump held an event where the audience heard a warm-up speaker refer to Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage,” among other derogatory remarks about Latinos that were peddled at the gathering.

“The timing,” a Politico report noted, “was remarkable.”

It also created additional opportunities that Harris and her party were eager to take advantage of. NBC News reported:

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is seizing on a Donald Trump ally’s racist comments about Puerto Ricans this weekend to launch a digital ad targeting Latino voters that argues they ‘deserve better’ than what the former president has to offer. … The 30-second spot will run online in battleground states on platforms like YouTube TV, Hulu and Snapchat, where Latinos consume a lot of their media, according to a Harris campaign official who first shared the details with NBC News.

As best as I can tell, the Trump campaign hasn’t publicly commented on the ad, but Republican officials can’t be pleased that the former president’s New York City event provided fodder that was included directly in the Democrats’ new spot.

Around the same time as the ad was released, Barack Obama headlined an event in Philadelphia and also took care to shine a light on the ugliness of Trump’s Madison Square Garden gathering.

How much of an impact will this have? Though it’s difficult to say with certainty, NBC News’ report on Harris’ ad noted, “Pennsylvania alone is home to more than 450,000 Puerto Ricans, according to census data, with more than 300,000 eligible voters, according to the Latino Data Hub at UCLA.”

And the last time I checked, polls in the Keystone State — the nation’s largest battleground state — show the race in the commonwealth tied.

As for whether the community is engaged, Politico reported that many Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania are “furious” about the Trump rally.

Evidence of the backlash was immediate on Monday: A nonpartisan Puerto Rican group drafted a letter urging its members to oppose Trump on election day. Other Puerto Rican voters were lighting up WhatsApp chats with reactions to the vulgar display and raising it in morning conversations at their bodegas. Some are planning to protest Trump’s rally Tuesday in Allentown, a majority-Latino city with one of the largest Puerto Rican populations in the state.

The article quoted Victor Martinez, the owner of a Spanish-language radio station in Allentown, who said he was concerned about some Puerto Rican voters who were on the fence about voting at all.

“If we weren’t engaged before, we’re all paying attention now,” Martinez said.