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Trump is using tactics from the past in his election campaign. The attacks are also known against Barack Obama and women of color in Congress.
York – The Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump asked on Monday whether the Democrats knew where Vice President Kamala Harris “come.” This repeated a tactic he has used against other Democrats, including former President Barack Obama and women of color in Congress.
Trump referred to Harris’s policy positions without explanation as “regulatory jihad,” using a loaded Arabic term often translated as “holy war.” He repeatedly mispronounced her first name, which her supporters find demeaning and racist toward Harris, who is Black and Native American. Elsewhere, he questioned her upbringing.
Former President Donald Trump attends a campaign rally in York, Pa., on Monday. © Tom Brenner/The Washington Post
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“I wonder if they know where she came from, where she’s from, what her ideology is,” Trump said, referring to Harris’ father, a respected Jamaican economist. Harris has said she was raised primarily by her mother.
Trump has misleadingly called Donald Harris a “Marxist,” although this oversimplifies a long career as an academic focused on international development and practical issues related to his home country’s economy. Trump made these remarks because he complained that Democrats were trying to convince President Joe Biden replaced by Harris on their presidential ticket.
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Old tactics in a new US election: Where Trump has already used his attacks
In his comments, Trump repeated his 2019 allegations against several black Democratic congresswomen – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) – and told them to “go back” to where they came from. This remark was widely condemned at the time as racist and xenophobic.
Trump made his name in Republican politics more than a decade ago by baselessly questioning Obama’s citizenship, and he has also spread false doubts about Harris’s suitability to be vice president. Last week, he defined his own mission in running against Harris since she took Biden’s place in the race last month by portraying her as “a communist or a socialist or someone who is going to destroy our country.”
“Although she is the daughter of US citizens in the USA “Even though Trump was born in Houston, he has used the phrase ‘where she came from’ to question the citizenship status of non-white peers,” Jennifer Wingard, an associate professor at the University of Houston who specializes in political rhetoric, wrote in an email. “By linking the discussion of where she came from to her father’s scholarship, Trump is furthering his and the right wing’s notion that those who are not ‘lawful citizens’ of this country are suspect not only for their presence but for their ideals.”
Participants at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania watch Trump’s speech on Monday. © Tom Brenner/The Washington Post
US election 2024 to be about politics: Republicans criticize Trump’s focus on personal attacks
Trump’s continued emphasis on personal insults has angered some allies and advisers, who have urged him to limit himself to policy opposites. Monday’s speech on a Precision Custom Components factory floor was billed as an economic policy address to kick off a week of campaign rallies facing the Democratic National Convention. Trump will speak on crime in Michigan on Tuesday, national security in North Carolina on Wednesday and immigration at the Arizona-Mexico border on Thursday.
His economic proposals on Monday were light on concrete statements. He promised to halve energy prices without elaborating on how he would achieve this, and simply repeated his pledge to expand oil and gas drilling. Domestic production is already at a record high and prices are set on world markets.
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Trump also defended his plans to impose tariffs on foreign goods by falsely portraying the measures as taxes on foreign countries, when in reality they are paid by American consumers.
He also misrepresented his own economic record and current conditions. Although he claimed the country was in a “manufacturing recession,” manufacturing employment is higher than it was under Trump, and the United States has added more than 765,000 new manufacturing jobs since January 2021.
‘Another lie’ about politics: Trump’s political attacks are full of misinformation
He falsely claimed that he was the first president to raise federal revenue from import tariffs on China even though tariffs on China brought in between $3 billion and $10 billion annually during the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations, said Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington-based think tank.
“This is another lie about economic policy,” Posen said.
Trump also falsely claimed that Harris plans to enroll “illegal immigrants” in Medicare and Social Security. Undocumented immigrants pay into the programs but do not receive payments, meaning they help keep the programs solvent. Harris has not presented any plans to expand eligibility for Medicare and Social Security to undocumented immigrants.
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And Trump repeated the unfounded allegation of widespread voter registration by undocumented immigrants – a baseless claim he has made since at least 2017 to justify his loss in the previous year’s presidential election.
Easy game in the Republican state: Trump wants to make Pennsylvania clear for the 2024 US election
The visit to Pennsylvania was Trump’s second in three days. He held a rally in Wilkes-Barre on Saturday. The former president is visiting five battleground states this week to try to wrest the floor from Harris as Democrats gather in Chicago for their convention.
In his speech, Trump attacked Harris for changing her position on fracking – a method of extracting natural gas from the ground – and called her a “non-fracker.” Harris’ campaign said she now supports fracking.
York County is a reliably Republican area. Trump won about 62 percent and 61 percent of the vote here in 2016 and 2020, respectively. The county also supported Mitt Romney in 2012, John McCain in 2008, and George W. Bush in 2004 and 2000. While many parts of Pennsylvania outside of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have lost population, York and surrounding counties have gained population over the past decade.
Attack strategy in a double pack: Trump’s vice president JD Vance uses similar tactics for the 2024 US election
Elsewhere in the state, Trump’s vice presidential candidate, Senator JD Vance (R-Ohio), at a warehouse in North Philadelphia to offer his own criticism of Harris’ economic proposals.
“She says she wants to make food and housing more affordable for the American people on day one,” he told an audience of about 200 people. “Now, Kamala Harris, where have you been? You’ve been vice president for about 1,300 days. Day 1 was 3½ years ago. You should have been doing your job.”
Vance dismissed recent polls showing a close race or a Harris lead. “I don’t believe the polls when they say we’re ahead,” he said. “I don’t believe the polls when they say we’re tied. I don’t know the polls that say we’re behind.”
LeVine reported from York. Cheeseman reported from Philadelphia. Dan Keating contributed to this report.
About the authors
Marianne LeVine is a national political reporter for The Washington Post.
Jeff Stein is a White House business reporter for The Washington Post. He was a crime reporter for the Syracuse Post-Standard and founded the nonprofit local news agency Ithaca Voice in upstate New York in 2014. He has also been a reporter for Vox.
Isaac Arnsdorf is a national political reporter covering the Trump campaign. His first book, Finish What We Started: The MAGA Movement’s Ground War to End Democracy, was published in 2024.
We are currently testing machine translations. This article has been automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on August 20, 2024 at the “Washingtonpost.com“ was published – as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.
