At a
Pennsylvania Rally, Trump Descends to New Levels of Vulgarity
The G.O.P.
nominee repeated crude insults, and his supporters relished each moment. But
the display could alienate swing voters.
Michael Gold
By Michael
Gold
Reporting
from Latrobe, Pa.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/19/us/politics/trump-vulgarity-pennsylvania-rally.html
Oct. 19,
2024
Former
President Donald J. Trump on Saturday spewed crude and vulgar remarks at a
rally in Pennsylvania that included an off-color remark about a famous golfer’s
penis size and a coarse insult about Vice President Kamala Harris.
The
performance, 17 days before the election in a critical battleground state,
added to the impression of the Republican nominee as increasingly unfiltered
and undisciplined. It comes as some of Mr. Trump’s allies and aides worry that
Mr. Trump’s temperament and crass style are alienating undecided voters.
It was
unclear if the outbursts and insults were an expression of his frustration as
the campaign grinds on or of his reflexive desire to entertain his crowds. At
her own events on Saturday, Ms. Harris called attention to Mr. Trump’s
temperament and his tendency to “go off script and ramble.”
Mr. Trump
opened his speech at the airport in Latrobe, Pa., with 12 minutes of
reminiscing about the golfer Arnold Palmer, who grew up in the Western
Pennsylvania town and for whom the airport was named.
His
monologue culminated in lewd remarks about the size of Mr. Palmer’s penis.
Moments later, Mr. Trump gave the crowd an opportunity to call out a profanity.
He went on to use that four-letter word to describe Ms. Harris.
“Such a
horrible four years,” Mr. Trump said, referring to the Biden-Harris
administration, as he surveyed the crowd of hundreds of people in front of him.
“We had a horrible — think of the — everything they touch turns to —.”
Many in his
audience — which was mostly made up of adults but included some children,
infants and teenagers — eagerly filled in the blank, shouting, “Shit!”
Minutes
later, Mr. Trump urged his supporters to vote, telling them that they had to
send a crude message to Ms. Harris: “We can’t stand you, you’re a shit vice
president.”
With
Election Day nearing, Mr. Trump’s advisers billed Saturday’s speech as the
start of his efforts to make a closing argument to voters. But the choice to
open his rally with a long story about Mr. Palmer — one of the few topics Mr.
Trump spoke about at significant length without veering off on tangents — set a
curious tone.
“This is a
guy that was all man,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Palmer, who died in 2016. “This
man was strong and tough. And I refuse to say it, but when he took showers with
the other pros, they came out of there, they said, ‘Oh, my god, that’s
unbelievable.’”
As the crowd
reacted, Mr. Trump chuckled. Later, he said, “I had to tell you the shower part
of it because it’s true. What can I tell you? We want to be honest.”
Mr. Trump
has always enjoyed shocking people, and in addition to cursing volubly, he
enjoys talking about sex and men’s and women’s looks.
But in the
past, he had refrained, for the most part, from being overtly crude publicly as
a candidate or as president. Now, however, as he makes his third run for the
White House and has become visibly angrier since Ms. Harris joined the race,
there has been a notable uptick in such behavior, especially in the campaign’s
final weeks and days.
In rallies,
in interviews and on social media, he has seemingly relished deploying
off-color language that politicians shied away from in another era. He has
reposted racially and sexually charged insults of Ms. Harris on his Truth
Social website, and he has done little to dissuade or calm crowds that have
chanted profanity about the people with whom he has grievances.
This week,
Mr. Trump was speaking at a Catholic charity event and standing mere feet from
the Archbishop of New York when he swore while insulting Bill de Blasio, the
former mayor of New York. “He was a terrible mayor,” Mr. Trump said. “I don’t
give a shit if this is comedy or not.”
Mr. Trump
often uses a variation of that word to allude to the four criminal cases
against him. “I won’t say it, because I don’t like using the word ‘bullshit’ in
front of these beautiful children,” he said in June at an event at a megachurch
in Arizona, where the crowd began chanting it in unison, to Mr. Trump’s glee.
It was one
of several recent acknowledgments from Mr. Trump, including one in Latrobe,
that his profanity had the potential to offend. Mr. Trump has often told his
crowds the story of a letter he received from Franklin Graham, the evangelical
leader, urging him to clean up his language.
“I wrote him
back,” Mr. Trump said on Saturday. “I said, I’m going to try to do that, but
actually, the stories won’t be as good. Because you can’t put the same emphasis
on it. So tonight, I broke my rule.”
Many of
those who attend his rallies reflect his attitude in their apparel, wearing
shirts, baseball caps and other clothing with vulgar expressions, many of which
are aimed at Ms. Harris.
In Latrobe,
Mr. Trump eventually shifted to his typical campaign themes. At one point, he
insisted his election might bring about “America’s new golden age.”
It was a
rare moment of optimism in his speech. Mostly, Mr. Trump continued to use dark,
at times violent, rhetoric to describe the Biden administration, the American
economy and illegal immigration, which he once again spoke of as a military
invasion.
Michael Gold
is a political correspondent for The Times covering the campaigns of Donald J.
Trump and other candidates in the 2024 presidential elections. More about
Michael Gold
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