“You don’t mind if I lose the teleprompter for a second, do you?”, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump asked his audience in Pennsylvania at a campaign rally on Saturday – less than four minutes into his speech.
What followed was a long-winded, rambling speech in which Trump emphasized that he was more attractive than his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Time The magazine’s latest cover features a sketch of Harris with the words “Your Moment,” accompanied by an article by a senior correspondent Charlotte Alter. Harris’ portrait, illustrated by Neil Jamiesonfades into images of supporters holding campaign signs. When Trump first saw the image, he claimed: “I said, ‘Is that Sophia Loren?’ I couldn’t, who could that be? ‘Is that Elizabeth Taylor?'”
He then calls Loren beautiful before warning the US Senate candidate Dave McCormickwith whom Trump campaigned, said that one should “never call a woman beautiful because that would mean the end of my political career.”
Trump then takes action against a “speechwriter for Ronald Reagan,” presumably Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan. Noonan has written about Harris’s appearance in recent weeks, saying: “Her beauty and the social warmth spoken of by all who have known her over the years combine to produce a radiant result.”
“She said something that touched me,” Trump began, apparently referring to Noonan’s columns. “She said Kamala has a great advantage, she is a very beautiful woman. She is a beautiful woman.” The crowd boos.
“But I say I look a lot better than her. Much better. Much better. I’m a better looking person than Kamala,” Trump continued to cheers.
As the Democratic Party Convention begins in Chicago on Monday, Trump and his team are trying to mount an effective defense against the increasingly energetic movement to elect Harris and Tim Walzthe governor of Minnesota and likely Democratic vice presidential nominee. But Saturday’s comments illustrate the challenge Trump campaign advisers face in pushing a strategy that requires Trump to focus on policy rather than disparaging Harris’ intelligence and ethnic identity or hurling other personal insults.
Trump’s comments on Saturday criticizing Harris’ attractiveness were the latest attack in a misogynistic and racist campaign against the first black woman of South Asian descent elected to lead a major party.
In an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists in late July, Trump falsely claimed that Harris had misinterpreted her multiracial identity. “She was always of Indian descent and only promoted Indian descent,” he said. “I didn’t know she was black until she happened to become black several years ago and now wants to be known as black.”
Harris was “not smart enough” to hold a press conference and was “barely competent,” Trump also said. In addition, The New York TimesHe is said to have called Harris a “slut” several times in private.
On the eve of the DNC, a new CBS News/YouGov poll shows the two candidates tied in swing states, while Harris is three percentage points ahead nationally. The gap between voters, the poll says, has a lot to do with gender. Women surveyed were more likely to see Harris as someone who “fights for people like you.” Only 29 percent of men said Harris would fight “a lot” for people like them, while 43 percent of men responded that Donald Trump would do just that.
And when asked whether efforts to promote equality between men and women have gone too far, men and Republicans were much more likely to answer “yes,” while only 10% of Republicans said efforts did not go far enough.
