In a speech aimed at rallying religious supporters in southern Florida, US presidential candidate Donald Trump falsely accused election rival Kamala Harris of anti-Semitism and said she will kill newborn babies. The vice president, married to a Jewish man, has gained ground in polling since replacing Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket.
Former Republican president Trump spent much of his address at a religious convention attacking Harris’s record, but many of his claims were baseless. Donald Trump, a convicted felon facing multiple further indictments, alleged that Kamala Harris had skipped Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress to honor a prior commitment, accusing her of anti-Semitism without evidence.
“She doesn’t like Jewish people. She doesn’t like Israel. That’s the way it is, and that’s the way it’s always going to be. She’s not going to change,” Trump said. This remark and his claim that Harris “is totally against the Jewish people” marked an escalation in his incendiary rhetoric, just days after his campaign spoke of a focus on unity following an alleged attempt on his life.
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Trump’s hour-long speech, hosted by the hard-right Turning Point Action, raised legitimate questions about Harris’s past statements on policing, immigration, and the environment but was marred by hyperbole and falsehoods. He falsely suggested that the Justice Department and FBI were targeting Christians and anti-abortion activists for their beliefs.
He also called Biden’s decision to exit the election campaign a “coup” by Democrats and described America as a “laughing stock.” Trump saved his harshest words for Harris, calling her a “bum” and a failed vice president who would appoint “hardcore Marxists” to the Supreme Court.
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In perhaps his most egregious claim, Donald Trump falsely accused Kamala Harris of wanting to force doctors to give chemical castration drugs to children and suggested she might cheat to win the election. “If Kamala Harris has her way, they will have a federal law for abortion, to rip the baby out of the womb in the eighth, ninth month and even after birth — execute the baby after birth,” he claimed.
Donald Trump, now 78, is scrambling to reorient his campaign against Harris, who is two decades younger, after expecting to face 81-year-old incumbent Biden. Last week, Trump accepted the official presidential nomination at the Republican convention in Milwaukee, following a near-fatal gunman attack at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Seeking to become the first female president in US history, Kamala Harris is rapidly assembling a campaign against an opponent in near permanent reelection mode since becoming president in 2016. Former President Barack Obama pledged support for Harris, as polls showed her closing the gap Trump had built over Biden.
A top California prosecutor and senator before becoming the first female, Black, and South Asian vice president, Kamala Harris highlighted Trump’s criminal conviction and what she described as a Republican attack on “hard-fought freedoms” in US society. Democrats criticized a Trump campaign announcement casting doubt on whether he will debate Harris.
“It shows that he’s afraid,” Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a major Kamala Harris campaign advocate, told MSNBC. “It shows that he knows that if the two of them are on a stage together, it’s not going to end well for him.”
