PRAIRIE DU CHIEN, Wis. — The day after Vice President Kamala Harris visited the southern border and pledged to crack down on asylum and beef up security, former President Donald Trump unleashed a string of sharply personal attacks on her at a rally Saturday, expressing contempt for her intelligence and calling her “mentally disabled.”
In a dark, often rambling speech lasting longer than an hour, Trump — whose advisers have urged him to focus on policy issues rather than on personal jabs — notably escalated his attacks against Harris. Trump, who has often questioned President Joe Biden’s mental abilities, told supporters at a rally in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, that “Joe Biden became mentally impaired; Kamala was born that way.”
Trump then tied Harris to the Biden administration’s border policies, adding, “And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country.” Later, he criticized her remarks at the border Friday as “bullshit.”
It was a startling series of broadsides in the midst of a presidential campaign, even for a candidate who seems to delight in offensive remarks. Trump’s speech in Prairie du Chien, a town of about 5,000 people along the Mississippi River, was meant to serve as a response to Harris’ border visit, in Douglas, Arizona, where she promised to crack down on asylum and called for tougher punishments against those who cross the border illegally. Those positions, an attempt to address a political vulnerability, made up the core of one of the toughest speeches on immigration and border policy that a Democrat has made in a generation.
But Trump, who stood surrounded by posters of immigrants living in the country illegally accused of violent crimes, attacked Harris for being a political opportunist. And he claimed that she bore responsibility for migrants who have come into the country illegally and committed crimes.
“She is a disaster,” Trump said. “And she is not ever going to do anything for the border, and she didn’t even want to get tough now, except her poll numbers were tanking.”
The polls show the candidates locked in a tight race. And in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, 69% of likely voters described Harris as intelligent, including 71% of independent voters. That is higher than the 60% who said the same of Trump.
As he warns Americans of a “migrant crime” wave — even while the FBI has reported that murders in the United States dropped in 2023 at the fastest rate on record — Trump often points to high-profile crimes that authorities have said involved immigrants living in the country illegally. On Saturday, he ceded the microphone at one point to Patty Morin, the grieving mother of Rachel Morin, 37, who authorities say was raped and murdered by an immigrant in the country illegally last year while jogging in Maryland.
Throughout his speech, Trump continued to vilify immigrants who lack legal permission with incendiary language, calling them “stone-cold killers” and blaming them for other societal ills.
At one point, Trump acknowledged the grim nature of his remarks. “Isn’t this a wonderful and inspiring speech?” he joked. “I got people sitting in the front row — they’re going, ‘Oh, my god.’” Later, he added, “I’m just saying, this is a dark — this a dark speech.”
The Harris campaign declined to respond to Trump’s personal attacks. Sarafina Chitika, a Harris campaign spokesperson, said in a statement that Trump was “finally telling the truth to voters: He’s got nothing ‘inspiring’ to offer the American people, just darkness.”
Even as Trump delivered remarks about immigration, which his campaign sees as a signature issue that could help him win in critical battleground states, he frequently veered off course, following a number of familiar tangents, including questioning climate change, accusing Harris of lying about having worked at McDonald’s and attacking Biden’s appearance.
Trump revived his threat to prosecute people who are found to “cheat on this election” if he were to win in November. And, repeating his false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, which he lost, he added that he would also “go back to the last” election and prosecute people for supposed voter fraud “if we’re allowed.”
Trump and Harris appear to be locked in a tight race in Wisconsin, as she has lost some of the edge that she held in the immediate weeks after she replaced Biden on the Democratic ticket. New polling from the Times and Siena College found Harris leading Trump in Wisconsin, 49% to 47%.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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