WASHINGTON: Donald Trump’s efforts to delegitimize Kamala Harris and portray her as a “foreigner” has gotten more intense and persistent as he falls behind in polls. In fresh salvos against his Democratic rival, Trump has mused about the authenticity of Kamala Harris’ last name, and wondered where she “came from,” obliquely suggesting she is a foreigner.He also suggested she is not eligible to run for the White House because, among other issues, she staged a “coup” against Joe Biden.
“I wonder if they knew where she comes from, where she came from, what her ideology is,” Trump said at a campaign event on Monday in York, Pennsylvania, a swing state where he is starting to lose ground after leading in the polls when Biden was the Democratic candidate. He is now repeatedly referring to Kamala father’s Donald Harris as a “Marxist economist” and “Marxist professor” and saying she may have inherited her “socialist” and “communist” ideas from him.
Harris father Donald Harris was a student from Jamaica who as part of his academic work in international development studied Marx and his ideas. He was a friend and colleague of several Indian economists with a leftist orientation including Amartya Sen, Ajit Singh, and Meghnad Desai, and because of this connection he also briefly taught at the Delhi School of Economics in the late 1960s before he and Kamala’s mother Shyamala Gopalan divorced.
Trump’s tactics aimed at disenfranchising Kamala Harris echoes similar efforts against Barack Obama, whose US birth he has questioned, and whose middle name Hussein he invokes with emphasis to highlight its Islamic origin. He has also otherized other minority lawmakers such as Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib, asking them to “go back” to where they came from.
Several times during the current campaign, he has asked Harris to “get out” and “get the hell out of here.” In recent speeches, he has accused Kamala Harris of deliberately allowing millions of illegal aliens to enter America and engage in criminal activity and “destroy our country.” On Monday, he described Harris’s policy positions as a “regulatory jihad,” using a loaded Islamic term. Trump also continues to deliberately mispronounce her name and claiming he is “entitled” to make personal attacks on her because she “weaponized” the justice system against him.
Trump’s crude tactics, while solidifying his racist MAGA base, appears to be alienating moderate Republicans, some of whom are now openly announcing their support for Kamala Harris even as his surrogates are begging him to lay off the personal attacks. Over the weekend, former Judge Michael Luttig, a conservative Republican and legal scholar who said he had never voted for a Democrat in his life, endorsed Harris, saying Trump is a threat to American democracy and Harris is the only candidate who “can claim the mantle of defender and protector of America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law.”
The two candidates and their supporters are now gearing up for even more ferocious attacks with Harris campaign starting to step on Trump’s toes rather than stepping back. While former President Barack Obama is slated to speak on day two of the DNC in Chicago on Tuesday night, Kamala Harris will drive up 90 miles north to Milwaukee for a rally at the 18,000 person Fiserv Forum, where Republicans held their convention last month. Filling up the arena will drive Trump absolutely nuts considering his obsession with crowd size.
The Harris camp is also routinely trolling Trump, including by projecting messages on the Trump Tower in Chicago. One message beamed on the building last night read: “Trump-Vance weird as hell.” Trump has responded angrily to be being characterized as weird (and once threw his running mate under the bus saying they are calling Vance, not him, weird), but more trolling is on the way with pro-Kamala groups producing videos and memes showing what they say is the former president’s “cognitive decline and malignant narcissism.”
In turn, Trump surrogates are generating memes showing Kamala Harris as having drinking issues and supporting radicals and anarchists. Trump has also begun to call her “Comrade Kamala Harris”
“I wonder if they knew where she comes from, where she came from, what her ideology is,” Trump said at a campaign event on Monday in York, Pennsylvania, a swing state where he is starting to lose ground after leading in the polls when Biden was the Democratic candidate. He is now repeatedly referring to Kamala father’s Donald Harris as a “Marxist economist” and “Marxist professor” and saying she may have inherited her “socialist” and “communist” ideas from him.
Harris father Donald Harris was a student from Jamaica who as part of his academic work in international development studied Marx and his ideas. He was a friend and colleague of several Indian economists with a leftist orientation including Amartya Sen, Ajit Singh, and Meghnad Desai, and because of this connection he also briefly taught at the Delhi School of Economics in the late 1960s before he and Kamala’s mother Shyamala Gopalan divorced.
Trump’s tactics aimed at disenfranchising Kamala Harris echoes similar efforts against Barack Obama, whose US birth he has questioned, and whose middle name Hussein he invokes with emphasis to highlight its Islamic origin. He has also otherized other minority lawmakers such as Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib, asking them to “go back” to where they came from.
Several times during the current campaign, he has asked Harris to “get out” and “get the hell out of here.” In recent speeches, he has accused Kamala Harris of deliberately allowing millions of illegal aliens to enter America and engage in criminal activity and “destroy our country.” On Monday, he described Harris’s policy positions as a “regulatory jihad,” using a loaded Islamic term. Trump also continues to deliberately mispronounce her name and claiming he is “entitled” to make personal attacks on her because she “weaponized” the justice system against him.
Trump’s crude tactics, while solidifying his racist MAGA base, appears to be alienating moderate Republicans, some of whom are now openly announcing their support for Kamala Harris even as his surrogates are begging him to lay off the personal attacks. Over the weekend, former Judge Michael Luttig, a conservative Republican and legal scholar who said he had never voted for a Democrat in his life, endorsed Harris, saying Trump is a threat to American democracy and Harris is the only candidate who “can claim the mantle of defender and protector of America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law.”
The two candidates and their supporters are now gearing up for even more ferocious attacks with Harris campaign starting to step on Trump’s toes rather than stepping back. While former President Barack Obama is slated to speak on day two of the DNC in Chicago on Tuesday night, Kamala Harris will drive up 90 miles north to Milwaukee for a rally at the 18,000 person Fiserv Forum, where Republicans held their convention last month. Filling up the arena will drive Trump absolutely nuts considering his obsession with crowd size.
The Harris camp is also routinely trolling Trump, including by projecting messages on the Trump Tower in Chicago. One message beamed on the building last night read: “Trump-Vance weird as hell.” Trump has responded angrily to be being characterized as weird (and once threw his running mate under the bus saying they are calling Vance, not him, weird), but more trolling is on the way with pro-Kamala groups producing videos and memes showing what they say is the former president’s “cognitive decline and malignant narcissism.”
In turn, Trump surrogates are generating memes showing Kamala Harris as having drinking issues and supporting radicals and anarchists. Trump has also begun to call her “Comrade Kamala Harris”