‘Mentally disabled’: Trump escalates dark rhetoric against Harris, immigrants
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Republican nominee Donald Trump blames Vice-President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden for allowing undocumented immigrants into the US.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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WASHINGTON – Donald Trump on Sept 28 deployed some of his harshest rhetoric against immigrants who have crossed the border illegally and committed crimes, especially against young women, while he also escalated his personal insults against Vice-President Kamala Harris.
In the battleground state of Wisconsin, Trump called Ms Harris, who on Sept 27 visited the US-Mexico border
The Republican presidential candidate was flanked by posters of illegal immigrants in the US who have been arrested for murder and other violent crimes, and banners saying “End Migrant Crime” and “Deport Illegals Now”.
His speech was unusually devoted almost entirely to undocumented immigrants. He called those who had committed violent crime “monsters”, “stone-cold killers” and “vile animals”.
Trump is locked in a close race with Ms Harris ahead of the Nov 5 election. Immigration and the southern border are among the top issues for voters, according to opinion polls.
Harris spokeswoman Sarafina Chitika said after Trump’s speech: “He has got nothing ‘inspiring’ to offer the American people, just darkness.”
The former president blamed Ms Harris and Democratic President Joe Biden for allowing undocumented immigrants into the US, and accused some migrants of wanting to “rape, pillage, thieve, plunder and kill the people of the United States”.
At one point, Trump admitted: “This is a dark speech.”
Trump’s speech was in the small Wisconsin city of Prairie du Chien, where a Venezuelan in the US illegally was detained in September for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman and attacking her daughter.
Some seven million migrants have been arrested crossing the US-Mexico border illegally during Mr Biden’s administration, according to government data, a record-high number that has fuelled criticism of Ms Harris and Mr Biden from Trump and fellow Republicans.
In her visit to the border on Sept 27, Ms Harris outlined her plans to fix “our broken immigration system”, while accusing Trump of “fanning the flames of fear and division” over the impact of immigrants on American life.
Ms Harris also called for tighter asylum restrictions and vowed to make a “top priority” of stopping fentanyl from entering the US.
Trump also repeated his false claim that his 2020 election defeat to Mr Biden was fraudulent. If re-elected, and “if allowed”, Trump said he would prosecute people he blames for his loss then.
Studies generally find there is no evidence immigrants commit crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans, and critics say Trump’s rhetoric reinforces racist tropes.
Trump typically focuses on young women allegedly killed by Hispanic assailants to drive home that message, eschewing cases that involve male victims.
Trump’s opponents accuse him of cynically exploiting grieving families to fuel his narrative that foreign-born, often Hispanic, arrivals are part of an invading army.
But some of the families of the victims have welcomed Trump’s focus on the issue of violent crime and the death toll of teenagers caused by the opioid drug fentanyl, much of which crosses into the US over the southern border.
Several parents who had lost children to attacks by illegal immigrants in the US, or to fentanyl, spoke in support of Trump before his remarks on Sept 28. REUTERS
