Trump
escalates insults against Harris as he faces scrutiny over alleged praise of
Hitler
Ex-president
makes characteristically rambling speech after report comes out of his alleged
sexual misconduct
Sam Levin
Wed 23 Oct
2024 21.47 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/23/trump-harris-insults-georgia-rally
Donald Trump
escalated his personal insults against Kamala Harris at a Wednesday evening
rally in Georgia as he faces growing scrutiny over reports of his praise of
Hitler and alleged sexual misconduct.
“This woman
is crazy,” the former president said at an event in the Atlanta suburb of
Duluth, hosted by Turning Point USA, a far-right youth group. He said voters
should stand up to the vice-president and tell her: “You’re the worst ever.
There’s never been anybody like you. You can’t put two sentences together. The
world is laughing at us because of you.” He also said that in her recent
interview with CBS, she “gave an answer that was from a loony bin”, later
adding: “She’s not a smart person. She’s a low IQ individual.”
The rally,
less than two weeks before election day, came after the Guardian published an
interview with a former model who accused Trump of groping her at Trump Tower
in 1993 after notorious sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein introduced them, an
allegation the Trump campaign denied. Stacey Williams said it felt as if the
unwanted touching was part of a “twisted game” between the two men and that it
appeared Epstein and Trump were “really, really good friends and spent a lot of
time together”.
Williams’s
account put the spotlight back on the roughly two dozen women who have accused
Trump of sexual misconduct throughout his career. Harris, campaigning with
Republican former congresswoman Liz Cheney, who has sought to encourage
Republican women to support the Democrat.
The Georgia
rally also came after Harris’s surprise speech in Washington DC on Wednesday,
when she denounced the former president as a “fascist” who wants “unchecked
power”. John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff and a retired Marine general,
told the New York Times this week that he believed Trump met the definition of
“fascist” and was “certainly an authoritarian”. He also said Trump repeatedly
commented: “Hitler did some good things, too.”
In a
characteristically rambling speech, Trump went on meandering tangents about
Google (“Google is treating us much better. Do you notice that? What happened
to Google?”); McDonald’s (“McDonald’s was one of the most viewed things that
[Google] ever had”); Emmanuel Macron (“I stopped wars with France”); Richard
Nixon (“That was not good when they found out he taped every single
conversation”); and the vice-president’s name (“You can’t call her ‘Harris’
because nobody knows who the hell you’re talking about”).
He
threatened to sue CBS’s 60 Minutes, repeating false claims that the station
manipulated Harris’s interview after Trump backed out of his planned interview
with the program. He reiterated the threat a second time about an hour later in
his speech.
Robert F
Kennedy Jr, former independent presidential candidate, also rallied for Trump
in Georgia, calling Kelly a “known liar”. Trump did not address Kelly at the
rally, but on Truth Social called his former chief of staff a “LOWLIFE” and
“total degenerate”.
In a
“faith-focused” town hall in Zebulon, Georgia earlier on Wednesday, Trump
praised Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s nationalist prime minister who has been
condemned for undermining democratic institutions and aligning with Moscow and
Beijing.
Asked about
his faith, Trump responded: “When you believe in God, it’s a big advantage over
people that don’t have that.” He went on to falsely suggest he has endured more
investigations than notorious gangster Al Capone.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário