With two weeks left in the close presidential election, Donald J. Trump escalated his vicious attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday, delivering a series of humiliating personal insults at two campaign events.
The onslaught mirrored a pattern from the 2016 and 2020 campaigns, when Trump ramped up his often violent personal tirades against his opponents as Election Day approached. He accused Hillary Clinton in 2016 and then-candidate Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020 of drug use without any evidence.
But allies of the former president have been toning down their personal attacks on Harris for months, as Trump faces tough polls and analysts predict a narrow lead in battleground states. He has urged Trump to focus on the issue. They expressed concern that Mr. Trump risks alienating undecided voters who may follow his political views but are put off by his harsh rhetoric. There is.
Mr. Trump shows no signs of following their lead, instead increasing the frequency and harshness of his insults, including using profanity against Ms. Harris on Saturday. Tuesday’s string of insults contained no swear words, but included many swipes that compared the U.S. vice president to an animal and raised baseless questions about whether she was a drug abuser.
Mr. Trump has expressed his disdain for Ms. Harris for months, but until now he had only used the most derogatory words about her in private. But as he becomes more insecure about her economic dominance and struggles to make any criticism of her stand out to voters, he increasingly uses various They have retreated into wild personal attacks. .
During a meandering speech that lasted nearly two hours at a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, Mr. Trump called Ms. Harris “a person with a low IQ,” and at one point, when the teleprompter froze, said, “She’s like a dog.” It’s fixed,” he said. He made unsubstantiated insinuations that she had a drinking problem and may be abusing drugs, and said he believed she had “mental health issues” as she sometimes stumbled recalling her words during speeches. “He does not have the physical capacity to serve as president,” he said.
Mr. Trump on Tuesday attacked Ms. Harris, who attended a meeting in Washington and recorded two media interviews, for not ceasing any campaign efforts. In Greensboro, he accused her of spending all day “sleeping.” Earlier, at an event at his resort in Doral, Florida, he called Harris, the country’s first black vice president, “an incredibly lazy person and she has a reputation for that,” and called her racist. It evoked a metaphor.
This attack was also influenced by past campaigns. Throughout his political career, Trump has trashed the work ethic of his opponents. But her criticism of Harris comes as both campaigns have traded jabs over who has more energy and who is working harder in the final stages of the campaign.
Harris and her allies have repeatedly suggested that the 78-year-old Trump may be “too tired” to serve another term as president. Harris’ campaign shared a video of Trump appearing to nod at a campaign event in Michigan on Friday, and Harris’ running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, said Tuesday that Trump had He said he lacked “physical strength.” To become president.
Trump has cited his campaign schedule as evidence of his fitness, frequently citing the inconsistent number of days he campaigned without taking a break. “We have 52 days left,” he told the several hundred people gathered at the Greensboro Complex event center. “We’ve got 14 more. We don’t have a day off.” Hours earlier, his campaign canceled a virtual town hall he was scheduled to attend, citing “scheduling changes” as the reason. Details were not disclosed.
Mr. Trump has shown signs of fatigue on the campaign trail, appearing less energetic at some events on busy days. During a rally in Greensboro, he would suddenly jump from scripted remarks to other topics of his choosing, such as lamenting the vandalism in Washington during his presidency and discussing the porosity of limestone. and made several verbal mistakes.
Acknowledging the Joes in the Front Row (avid superfans he often points out during rallies), he first referred to them as Jack in the Front Row, then corrected himself by calling them “Jack and Joe in the Front Row.”
In attacking Harris, he said “there’s something wrong with the vice president,” misjudged Harris’ gender and inappropriately referred to her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. did. While discussing his campaign at McDonald’s, he struggled to find the word fryer and said, “Those fries were delicious.” They just got out of that, uh, whatever situation that put them in trouble. ”
