Donald Trump, speaking at his first campaign rally since President Joe Biden ended his re-election bid, redirected a torrent of attacks Wednesday at the de facto Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.
“As you know, three days ago, we officially defeated the worst president in the history of our country, Joe Biden,” Trump told his crowd in Charlotte, North Carolina. “So now we have a new victim to defeat: lyin’ Kamala Harris … the most incompetent and far-left vice president in American history.”
Trump acknowledged at the top of his 90-minute speech that he was leaving behind the sunnier persona and themes of unity that he and other Republicans had suggested they would stick to after he survived an assassination attempt July 13. He repeatedly mispronounced Harris’ first name and at one point, using the catchphrase from his old NBC reality show “The Apprentice,” declared: “Kamala, you’re fired!”
“You know, I was supposed to be nice,” he said. “They say something happened to me when I got shot; I became nice. And when you’re dealing with these people, they’re very dangerous people — when you’re dealing with them, you can’t be too nice. You really can’t be. So if you don’t mind, I’m not going to be nice.”
The audience did not mind, cheering loudly, and for the next hour-plus, Trump was unsparing in his criticism of Harris’ long career in public service.
Trump mocked Harris for failing the bar exam on her first try. He targeted her work as San Francisco’s district attorney, arguing that she made the city worse, even though the good old days he recalled there came during Harris’ tenure, from 2004 to 2011.
“San Francisco, 20 years ago, was the greatest city in our country,” Trump said. “Today, it’s not a livable city.”
In a statement, Harris campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said: “Unity is over for Donald Trump — he is back with an unhinged, weird, and rambling speech complete with praise for the ‘late great’ Hannibal Lecter.”
Trump ran down a list of the progressive policy proposals, such as expanded health care coverage, that Harris advocated for as a senator from California and in her last presidential campaign, which ended before the 2020 primaries began. He placed her to the political left of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the democratic socialist who also ran for president that year.
“So if you want socialist health care, nation-wrecking inflation, the death of American energy and a lying radical left liberal San Francisco extremist as your commander in chief, then Kamala Harris is your candidate,” Trump said. “She’s the one for you.”
Trump also advanced a central GOP accusation against Harris — that she failed as a “border czar” after Biden tasked her with leading the administration’s efforts to address causes of migration from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Because of the assignment, Republicans have tied Harris to illegal border crossings.
“No person who deliberately lets these kinds of savage criminals into America should ever be trusted with power again, should ever be trusted to be the president of our country,” Trump said.
At one point, Trump invited Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, a labor union representing U.S. Border Patrol agents, to speak. Judd criticized Harris, saying she “refused to implement” policies that he recommended.
“This is the man for the presidency,” Judd said of Trump.
Trump, forced to tailor his campaign strategy to a new opponent, rarely mentioned Biden. He argued that Democrats had staged an affront to democracy by dumping Biden after the primaries were over because they were worried about his poll numbers. Trump, who faces criminal charges in two jurisdictions over allegations he illegally tried to overturn the 2020 election results, also accused Harris of knowing more about Biden’s health than she let on publicly.
“Now, if we start beating her in the polls by 10 or 15 points, are they going to bring in a third candidate?” Trump wondered. “It’s like, you know, ‘Trump is killing this guy, all right, out! Let’s bring in a new one.’”
Trump also wrestled with what has become Harris’ central pitch: that the campaign is now between a prosecutor and someone who was found guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
“Their campaign says, ‘I’m the prosecutor and he is the convicted felon.’ That’s their campaign,” Trump said. “I don’t think people are going to buy it.”
