Trump intensifies his racist attacks on Harris and immigrants

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024 in Erie, Pa. | Matt Rourke/AP

ERIE, Pa.—Republican presidential nominee, the criminal and adjudicated rapist Donald Trump, escalated his personal attacks on his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, here on Sunday by repeating an insult that she was “mentally impaired” while also saying she should be “impeached and prosecuted.”

His speech also reflected the fears of his campaign that white voters in Erie County and elsewhere in Pennsylvania and the northern Midwest need to be more frightened than they are if he is to win the election next month.

In his dark speech that painted a false picture of the state of the nation, he told a cheering crowd in Erie that Harris was responsible for an “invasion” at the U.S.-Mexico border and “she should be impeached and prosecuted for her actions.”

“Crooked Joe Biden became mentally impaired,” he added. “Sad. But lying Kamala Harris, honestly, I believe she was born that way. There’s something wrong with Kamala. And I just don’t know what it is, but there is definitely something missing. And you know what, everybody knows it.”

With just over a month until the election, Trump is intensifying his use of both racism and personal and offensive attacks, refusing to discuss a single issue of concern to voters other than the false worries that he creates.

His vows that political enemies be prosecuted trash the Constitution, which set up a system of justice supposedly protected from manipulation by powerful politicians. The criminal Trump Sunday even threatened to prosecute Google for allegedly allowing the publication of positive stories about Harris and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

In an attempt to make it more difficult to run an election in this country, he also attacked poll workers and election officials, vowing to “jail all those involved in any unscrupulous behavior this election including lawyers, donors, and even people who vote for my political opponents.”

These threats were on top of vows to prosecute both Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.

The threats by Trump are coming from a man who himself is an adjudicated criminal.  He was convicted in May of falsifying business records in a hush-money case in New York, with sentencing scheduled for Nov. 26. Two other cases are pending — a federal case for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, and a state case in Georgia for his efforts to overturn his 2020 loss there to Biden. Prosecutors are appealing a federal judge’s dismissal of a case involving his stealing of classified documents.

If he wins the election, Trump, in dictatorial fashion, is expected to pardon himself on the federal cases or order the Justice Department to shut down their investigations of him.

Counting on voters in Erie and elsewhere to bail him out, he seemed to admit he could lose the election in November. “If she wins, it’s not going to be so pleasant for me, but I don’t care,” he said.

Rather than discuss any single issue, he attacked Harris, the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to lead a major party ticket, as “stupid,” “weak,” “dumb as a rock,” and “lazy.” No leading Republican has risen up to take Trump on regarding his outrageous attacks. When asked about the attacks, Sen. Linsey Graham of South Carolina said Sunday that “the Harris policies are batshit crazy liberal.”

At the rally in Erie, Trump said the “invasion” of immigrants would end and mass deportations would begin if he took office. “Thousands of migrants from the most dangerous countries are destroying the character of small towns and leaving local communities in anguish and in despair,” he said, talking about communities in the battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, including the community of Erie itself. There have been no widespread reports of misery and anguish in Erie as a result of immigrants working or living there.

In the Erie speech, Trump’s attacks on immigrants went beyond anything he has said thus far about the issue.

He said that a violent and brutal period of free-for-all police attacks might have to be permitted in order to “clear up the problem.” Such a period was depicted in the movie The Purge, and what Trump was calling for is reminiscent of Kristallnacht in Germany, where the Nazis allowed the public to rampage through Jewish neighborhoods, destroying synagogues and businesses.

Progressives, he charged, “won’t allow” the police to arrest criminals. “The liberal left wants to destroy our country,” Trump declared. “You see these guys walking out” of stores carrying refrigerators and other appliances, and “the police are told you can’t do a thing…If you do, you’ll lose your job, you’ll lose your pension.”

He advocated turning the police loose “for one really rough day, one really nasty day” or “one real rough hour, and word will get out and it’ll stop immediately.

“They (immigrants) are breaking into houses and they will slit your throat,” he told the mostly white crowd in Erie. “They are raping and pillaging, and they are running stores where they don’t pay any taxes.”

The idea is to gin up votes by scaring voters into supporting him, allowing him to say nothing at all about raising living standards, wages, the right to form unions, healthcare, funding education, stopping corporate price-gouging, or any of the many serious issues faced by American voters.

With all the vitriol, Trump has not been able to overcome persistent Harris leads in the polls, especially in the northern tier “blue wall” states in the Midwest. She leads by five points in Pennsylvania which helps explain his stepped-up vitriol in Erie Sunday.

His biggest fear right now is that if the huge anti-MAGA coalition turns out on Election Day, Harris will be elected the next president of the United States.

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CONTRIBUTOR

John Wojcik

John Wojcik is Editor-in-Chief of People's World. He joined the staff as Labor Editor in May 2007 after working as a union meat cutter in northern New Jersey. There, he served as a shop steward and a member of a UFCW contract negotiating committee. In the 1970s and '80s, he was a political action reporter for the Daily World, this newspaper's predecessor, and was active in electoral politics in Brooklyn, New York.

Mark Gruenberg

Award-winning journalist Mark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People's World. He is also the editor of the union news service Press Associates Inc. (PAI). Known for his reporting skills, sharp wit, and voluminous knowledge of history, Mark is a compassionate interviewer but tough when going after big corporations and their billionaire owners.