Speaking to a crowd in Erie, Pa., on the last Saturday in September, former president Donald Trump lambasted his Democratic opponent.<\/p>\n
\u201cCrooked Joe Biden became mentally impaired \u2014 sad \u2014 but Lyin\u2019 Kamala Harris, honestly, I believe she was born that way,\u201d he said, mispronouncing the Democratic presidential nominee\u2019s name as the crowd chuckled. \u201cThere\u2019s something wrong with Kamala and I just don\u2019t know what it is, but there is definitely something missing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ten minutes later, he offered an even blunter assessment, warning that the nation\u2019s immigration system was being mismanaged by \u201cstupid people like Kamala.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s a stupid person,\u201d he said, before adding again, as if for emphasis: \u201cStupid person.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since Harris emerged on the top of the Democratic ticket in July, Trump has repeatedly attacked her intelligence \u2014 deriding her as a \u201cdumb,\u201d \u201cmentally unfit,\u201d \u201cslow,\u201d \u201cstupid,\u201d and an \u201cextremely low IQ person,\u201d among other similar pejoratives.<\/p>\n
To some of the former president\u2019s fiercest supporters, he is simply stating a truth and articulating aloud their view of her. But for many voters, as well as experts, Trump\u2019s sneering dismissiveness of Harris\u2019s intellect reeks of racism and sexism.<\/p>\n
If elected, Harris \u2014 who is Black and Indian American \u2014 would make history as the first female president, as well as the first female president of color, and Trump\u2019s repeated jabs at her intelligence go beyond mere insults.<\/p>\n
The attacks are particularly striking given Harris\u2019s deeply accomplished r\u00e9sum\u00e9: former San Francisco district attorney, former California attorney general, former U.S. senator and now vice president.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis lands differently when you do this to women of color, because you\u2019re saying, \u2018How dare you get out of the box I put you in,\u2019\u201d said A\u2019shanti Gholar, president of Emerge, an organization that recruits and trains Democratic women to run for office.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a history in the United States about the perception of Black people, about the perception of Black women, that we\u2019re not smart enough, that we\u2019re not good enough, that you only get to where you are because of affirmative action,\u201d she said. \u201cSo when you attack people of color, when you attack the vice president, you\u2019re really showing that you have these biases.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Trump campaign rejected the notion that Trump\u2019s questioning of Harris\u2019s intelligence is in any way racist or sexist.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnly dumb and low IQ individuals would be offended by that, expressing faux outrage because they need every excuse to explain away their insecure, miserable, and pathetic existence,\u201d Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement. \u201cBeing unintelligent has nothing to do with race or gender. It has everything to do with Kamala Harris being wholly unqualified to be President because of all the hurt and misery she has brought to America.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harris has raised her own questions about Trump\u2019s acuity and fitness for the job, though with less stark language and name-calling. In an interview with journalist Roland Martin last Monday, Harris accused Trump\u2019s staff of deliberately keeping him from the public, noting he had recently pulled out of a CBS \u201c60 Minutes\u201d interview, has refused a second debate with her and won\u2019t release his medical records.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy is his staff doing that?\u201d she asked. \u201cAnd it may be because they think he\u2019s just not ready. And unfit and unstable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s digs at Harris\u2019s intelligence began to intensify almost as soon as President Joe Biden bowed out of his reelection bid on July 21 and endorsed her. The very next day, Trump described Harris as \u201cDumb as a Rock\u201d in a social media post.<\/p>\n
He has since continued to press the theme. Appearing on \u201cFox & Friends\u201d on Friday morning, Trump described her as \u201ca low IQ person\u201d who is \u201cnot smart.\u201d The night before, at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in Manhattan, Trump\u2019s comedy roast included a jibe at Harris\u2019s intellect.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have someone in the White House who can barely talk, barely put together two coherent sentences, who seems to have mental faculties of a child,\u201d Trump told the white-tie crowd. \u201cThis is a person that has nothing going, no intelligence whatsoever. But enough about Kamala Harris.\u201d<\/p>\n
During an interview Tuesday at the Chicago Economic Club, Trump said Harris \u201cis not as smart as Biden, if you can believe it.\u201d And last Monday, he took to social media to call on her to \u201cpass a test on Cognitive Stamina and Agility,\u201d and dismissed her recent appearance on CBS\u2019s \u201c60 Minutes\u201d as \u201cslow and lethargic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s attacks on her intelligence happen on an almost daily basis \u2014 and sometimes more than once a day. Trump described her as \u201cdumber than hell\u201d at the Detroit Economic Club on Oct. 10, and in Reading, Pa., on Oct. 9 warned, \u201cPeople are realizing she\u2019s a dumb person and we can\u2019t have another dumb president.\u201d<\/p>\n
He continued: \u201cSomebody said to me \u2014 one of my people, a nice person, a staff person \u2014 said, \u2018Sir, please don\u2019t call her dumb. The women won\u2019t like it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has struggled with both Black and female voters. An NBC News poll conducted earlier this month found women supported Harris by a 14-point margin, with 55 percent preferring her and 41 percent preferring Trump. The same poll found that Harris also overwhelmingly leads Trump among Black voters, with 84 percent preferring her to the 11 percent who prefer Trump \u2014 although Trump has improved his margins slightly among Black women, to the consternation of the Harris campaign and Democrats.<\/p>\n
Trump has so far refused to heed advice to avoid bad-mouthing Harris\u2019s intelligence \u2014 in part because, as one confidant put it, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share a candid insight, \u201che doesn\u2019t respect her as a worthy opponent.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Harris campaign declined to respond to questions about Trump questioning her intelligence. Her team has largely followed the vice president\u2019s posture: not leaning into the history-making nature of her bid as potentially the first woman of color to be president, while dismissing Trump\u2019s broadsides as \u201cthe same old tired playbook\u201d that has left Americans exhausted and ready for change.<\/p>\n
Last week, Harris accused Trump\u2019s staff of hiding him away, rhetorically asking a large crowd in Greenville, N.C.: \u201cAre they afraid that people will see that he is too weak and unstable to lead America?\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has long viewed himself as a counterpuncher \u2014 forcefully attacking anyone who goes after him, including his White male opponents. Trump, 78, repeatedly went after Biden, 81, over his alleged cognitive abilities, arguing that the president was not physically or mentally capable of serving a second term.<\/p>\n
But Trump also has a rich history of sexist attacks, and has reserved some of his most vituperative abuse for women of color. In 2018, Trump demeaned three Black female reporters in as many days, describing one as a \u201closer\u201d and sneering at another, \u201cYou ask lots of stupid questions.\u201d In 2019, amid a fight with House Democrats, Trump took to social media to encourage \u201cThe Squad\u201d \u2014 a group of congresswomen of color \u2014 to \u201cgo back\u201d to the \u201ccrime infested places from which they came.\u201d<\/p>\n
He has also attacked Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who is Black, as \u201clow IQ Maxine Waters\u201d and as \u201can extraordinarily low IQ person.\u201d<\/p>\n
For supporters of Harris, 60, the insults are deeply offensive and, they say, geared as firing up Trump\u2019s base.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s an air of misogyny about it, there\u2019s an air of racism about it,\u201d said Kim Barbaro, 49, a Democrat from Ottsville, Pa., in rural Bucks County. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of dog whistles going on when he speaks, so I\u2019m hoping we\u2019ve reached the tipping point with it, because it\u2019s gotten so intense.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to return back to decency. He\u2019s an unkind human and I\u2019m not here for it,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Alexandra Moncure \u2014 a 35-year-old former Republican turned independent after the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol \u2014 took full-time leave from her marking job in Manhattan to volunteer at one of Harris\u2019s Pennsylvania campaign offices and said she believes Trump\u2019s attacks on the vice president\u2019s intelligence come \u201cfrom a place of insecurity.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s one of his approaches in terms of how he activates his base to attack people \u2014 on gender, on race, on anything that he views as something that could detract from her,\u201d Moncure said.<\/p>\n
Marjorie Margolies \u2014 a former Democratic congresswoman from Pennsylvania who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Annenberg School for Communication \u2014 arrived in Congress during the first \u201cYear of the Woman\u201d in 1992, when four women won election to the Senate, and said she is astonished that a presidential candidate deliberately treats his female opponent this way.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt boggles my mind that this is acceptable behavior,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m stunned, I\u2019m appalled, and mostly I\u2019m surprised that there are that many people out there who think that this is acceptable behavior. And I\u2019m oh so sad.\u201d<\/p>\n
But, she added, she thinks Harris\u2019s handling of this particular brand of insult has been masterful.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe doesn\u2019t want to give it too much air,\u201d Margolies said. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t want to give it a place to resonate. I think that is smart.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s supporters, meanwhile, remain largely undaunted by this line of attack, with many agreeing with and encouraging it. Julie Apfelbaum, a Republican who attended Trump\u2019s recent Coachella rally in Harris\u2019s home state of California, said Trump\u2019s criticisms of Harris are totally justified.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s stupid,\u201d said Apfelbaum, an insurance broker from the Thousand Oaks, Calif., area, before offering a mocking rendition of Harris speaking. \u201cShe gets done talking, and it\u2019s like, \u2018What did she say?\u2019 She said a bunch of nothing. She does a word salad, like they say.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later in the Coachella rally, the audience punctuated Trump\u2019s speech with shouted insults at Harris. One man stood up from his seat to yell that Harris was dumber than a rock. Someone responded that they shouldn\u2019t insult rocks.<\/p>\n
Hannah Knowles in Coachella, Calif.; Maeve Reston in Washington Crossing, Pa.; Marianne LeVine in Oaks, Pa.; and Jeremy Merrill and Clara Ence Morse in Washington contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Speaking to a crowd in Erie, Pa., on the last Saturday in September, former president Donald Trump lambasted his Democratic opponent. \u201cCrooked Joe Biden became mentally impaired \u2014 sad \u2014 but Lyin\u2019 Kamala Harris, honestly, I believe she was born that way,\u201d he said, mispronouncing the Democratic presidential nominee\u2019s name as the crowd chuckled. \u201cThere\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11417,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}