Kamala
Harris switch scrambles Republicans as Trump resorts to insults
A week ago,
former president was riding high, but now he faces vibrant, younger rival who
hit the ground running
Joanna
Walters in New York
Sat 27 Jul
2024 14.48 EDT
Donald Trump
capped a tough week in which his Democratic opponents turned the tables,
replacing aging Joe Biden with Kamala Harris as their top choice for president,
by resorting to insults and extremism on the campaign trail.
A week ago,
Trump was riding high on the iconic moment when he rose bloodied and with a
defiantly raised fist from an assassination attempt, pulling away in the polls.
Biden, meanwhile, was struggling to recover from his dire late June debate
against the Republican nominee and an unconvincing performance in the days
since.
Now, with
the former president suddenly facing a vibrant, younger rival in Harris, who
hit the ground running after Biden quit his re-election campaign last Sunday
and quickly endorsed her for the top of the ticket, Trump called her “a bum”
and said he “couldn’t care less” if he mispronounced her name.
At a rally
in Florida on Friday night organized by the far-right Christian advocacy group
Turning Point Action, Trump not only went personal against the US
vice-president, but once again appeared to threaten American democracy.
“Christians,
get out and vote! Just this time – you won’t have to do it anymore. You know
what? It’ll be fixed! It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my
beautiful Christians,” he said at the event in West Palm Beach, not far from
his Mar-a-Lago resort and residence.
Trump has
been adopted by much of the US evangelical Christian right as a flawed
champion, besmirched by losing in sexual misconduct and business fraud civil
cases and convicted on criminal counts for election-related fraud in a case
involving an adult film actor who alleged an extramarital sexual encounter with
him. With other criminal cases ongoing, he is nevertheless the one-term
president who tilted the US supreme court against abortion, gun control,
government experts, voting rights and diversity efforts in higher education,
delighting his white, ultra-conservative base.
At Friday’s
rally, he also lit into Harris. She won the support not only of Biden but of
the Obamas, the Clintons and the Democratic leaders in Congress last week, and
if she is officially anointed at the party’s convention next month, she will be
the first Black female nominee, the first south Asian nominee, and, if she
beats Trump in November, America’s first female president.
On Friday,
Trump called her “the most incompetent, unpopular and far-left vice-president
in American history”. And in a seeming nod to how the campaign has been
upended, he said: “She was a bum three weeks ago.”
He also
pronounced her name Ka-MAH-la Harris, whereas the vice-president pronounces her
name KAHM-a-la.
He insisted
that he had been told there are numerous ways to say her name and added: “I
said: ‘Don’t worry about it, doesn’t matter what I say, I couldn’t care less if
I mispronounce it or not.’ Some people think I mispronounce it on purpose but
actually I’ve heard it said about seven different ways.”
He has
variously called Harris “crazy”, “nuts” and “dumb as a rock”. Some Republicans
in Congress disparage her as a “diversity hire”, even though in her career
before she became the first female US vice-president she had been elected as
the district attorney of San Francisco, the attorney general of California and
a US senator. Rightwing activists and trolls have smeared her online with
racist, sexist and sexualized barbs, Reuters reported.
But opinion
polls show that in just a few days, Harris, 59, has closed to within a point or
two of Trump, whereas Biden had fallen around six points behind and was losing
support in vital swing states.
Trump, 78,
is now the oldest nominee to run for president. Earlier in the week, Trump also
said Harris “doesn’t like Jewish people” after she did not attend Benjamin
Netanyahu’s in-person visit and address to a joint session of Congress in
Washington where the Israeli prime minister defended Israel’s war in Gaza.
Harris spoke out strongly against the suffering of Palestinian civilians.
This despite
her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, being Jewish and being involved in
an antisemitism taskforce for the White House.
In the last
week, Trump also experienced another wobble in his trajectory. After
introducing his choice of running mate at the Republican national convention as
young gun and US senator for Ohio JD Vance to great fanfare, some within
Republican circles began to lament Vance as a liability rather than a boon to
the Trump ticket, following awkward performances on the campaign trail.
Then,
Jennifer Aniston went viral criticizing Vance’s past comments disparaging the
likes of Harris, who is a stepmother but has not given birth, as unhappy
“childless cat ladies”..
And on
Saturday, the New York Times published excerpts from communications between
Vance and a peer from Yale Law School who said their close friendship broke
down in 2021 when Vance supported a ban by Arkansas on gender-affirming care
for transgender minors. It was the first such ban in the country – later struck
down in court.
Former
friend Sofia Nelson is transgender and told the publication that the public
should know what Vance has said, including more about his pivot from being a
Trump opponent to an acolyte. This included Vance writing “I hate the police”
after white officers killed a Black 18-year-old, Michael Brown, in Ferguson,
Missouri, in 2014, and calling Trump a demagogue, a disaster and “morally
reprehensible” while saying the greater his appeal to the white electorate, the
worse it would be for Black voters. The Vance campaign called Nelson’s decision
to disclose private conversations unfortunate.
On Saturday
night, Trump and Vance are due to appear at a rally in Minnesota, hoping to get
their campaign off the back foot.
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