Former President Donald Trump tried new attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris in front of a conservative audience Friday night, linking her to the Biden administration’s policies on immigration and crime, with additional attacks on the state of California and the pronunciation of her name.
Trump’s speech on friendly territory at the conservative Turning Point Action Believers Summit was in many ways a series of his frequent criticisms: that the 2020 election was “rigged,” the end of Roe v. Wade It was something that “everyone” wanted, and the United States has become a “dumping ground” for criminals from other countries.
The former president’s hourlong address was his second public speech since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris, and it showcased Trump’s efforts to regroup in real time against his new Democratic opponent.
A flood of new polls have been published in recent days. The race between Trump and Harris has proven to be much closer. that Trump and Biden, and the Republicans They have had difficulty deciding on lines of attack against her.At a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Wednesday, many of the former president’s supporters acknowledged that Now he had a more difficult race on his hands.And her campaign signaled Thursday that she might withdraw from a previously planned Sept. 10 presidential debate that would now feature Harris instead of Biden.
In his speech in West Palm Beach on Friday, Trump took credit for Biden dropping out of the race, weeks after the president’s disastrous debate performance. But Trump focused more attention on Harris, starting by calling her a “bum three weeks ago.”
As he ran through a series of familiar campaign themes at the summit, billed as an event to “unite Christians across America,” Trump launched attacks against Harris on each one. On immigration, he called her the “border czar,” a term that Republicans have sought to apply to her diplomatic mission of working with Central American countries to address the causes of migration, and from which Democrats have sought to distance themselves. Later, he suggested that the next Turning Point conference might well be held in Caracas, Venezuela, because crime had declined there while criminals from that country had fled to the United States.
He also tried to link Harris to a recently passed California law that Prohibits school districts from disclosing the identity of transgender childrensaying he supported “trampling on parents’ rights.” And he used various pronunciations of her first name, Kamala, throughout the night, saying he “couldn’t care less” if she mispronounced it.
He argued that the vice president would appoint a “staunch Marxist” to the Supreme Court, contrasting that with the three “courageous” justices he appointed, citing their decision that overturned Roe v. WadeHe also defended the landmark 2022 decision as “what the pro-life movement fought for for 50 years” and something “every legal scholar” wanted, accusing Harris of supporting extreme abortion policies.
Trump also argued that protesters who painted pro-Hamas graffiti in Washington on Wednesday were “Kamala Harris supporters,” even though Harris condemned themShe accused Harris, whose husband Doug Emhoff is Jewish, of “not liking Jewish people,” and questioned how Jews or Catholics in the United States could vote for Democrats.
“With four more years of Harris, who was worse than Joe Biden in a real sense, and far more liberal, America will be decimated by immigration crime, demolished by fascism, devastated by runaway inflation, and impoverished by the complete destruction of American energy,” he said.
In a statement, Harris campaign spokesman James Singer said Trump “generally sounded like someone you wouldn’t want to sit near in a restaurant, let alone as president of the United States.”
“America can do better than the bitter, bizarre, retrograde rantings of criminal Donald Trump. Vice President Kamala Harris offers a vision for America’s future centered on freedom, opportunity, and security,” Singer said.
Concluding his remarks, Trump told the audience that it was important for Christians to get out and vote in November.
Within four years, he argued, the country will be “so well-arranged that there will be no need to vote.”