““She was a loser three weeks ago,” Trump said. “She was a loser, a failed vice president.”
The former president urged participants at a faith-themed event to vote, saying, “Vote early. Vote absentee. Vote on Election Day. It doesn’t matter how you vote, but you’ve got to go out and vote,” and promised that in four years’ time, “we’ll make thorough improvements so that you don’t have to vote.”
Trump and other Republicans have long sought to pin the blame for illegal immigration on Harris, casting her as Biden’s “border czar.” Biden has asked her to negotiate with three Central American countries to address the root causes of migration, but he has never given her overall control over border policy.
That attack and others on Friday night continued Trump’s efforts to portray Harris as an ultra-liberal figure. During a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu early Friday, Trump described Harris as a “radical leftist who destroyed San Francisco.”
But Harris, who served as San Francisco’s top prosecutor and later was elected California attorney general, has a more complicated political history: She won her first district attorney election by running to the right of her former boss, a sitting prosecutor she criticized as too soft on crime.
Trump took aim at Governor Harris’ past comments about the “defund the police” movement, which in 2020, during mass racial justice protests, Governor Harris said the movement was “rightly arguing that we need to re-examine these budgets and determine whether they reflect the right priorities.”
The Trump campaign attacked Harris on the issue after she joined Biden as the Democratic candidate that year, but a spokesman for Harris quickly denied her previous comments, saying, “Biden and Harris do not support cutting police budgets and it is a lie to claim otherwise.” As president, Biden has called for an increase in the police budget to put more officers on the streets.
“America can do better than the bitter, bizarre and backwards delusions of a criminal, Donald Trump,” Harris campaign spokesman James Singer said in a statement Friday night.
Trump also continued to complain about Biden dropping out of the election, repeatedly claiming that the Democrats’ attempt to put forward a candidate to replace Biden amounted to a “coup.”
Harris has already secured the majority of delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination at the party’s convention in Chicago next month, and got an additional boost Friday morning with the endorsement of some of the nation’s most senior Democratic leaders, former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, who publicly endorsed her candidacy.
Recent polls have shown some signs in Harris’ favor, and the old Biden-Harris campaign has been inundated with new money and volunteers. Harris has a higher approval rating than Biden in her head-to-head matchup with Trump.
Trump slammed Harris in a speech at a rally earlier this week, and continued to slam Biden this week at a Turning Point USA event, arguing the Democratic switch was unfair.
“So we are being forced to spend time and money fighting a fraudulent Joe Biden. He had poor approval ratings after a terrible debate and dropped out of the race. Now we have to start all over again,” Trump said on his Truth social platform earlier this week, questioning whether Republicans should “receive reparations for fraud.”
In West Palm Beach, Trump appeared without the bandage on his ear that he had been wearing after a gunman tried to assassinate him at a rally in Butler, Pa. “As you can see, I’m doing well and I’ve actually just removed the last of the bandages that I had on my ear,” Trump said, making an “hmmm” sound.
Trump, who has a habit of giving derogatory nicknames to his political opponents, again mispronounced Harris’ name, falsely claiming there are “a million ways” to say it and saying he doesn’t care if people pronounce it incorrectly.
He also criticized Ms Harris for not attending Mr Netanyahu’s recent speech to Congress, and claimed she “doesn’t like Jews” even though her husband, Doug Emhoff, is Jewish.
He repeated false claims that the 2020 election was rigged and said he would “not allow the 2024 presidential election to be rigged.”
The crowd began chanting, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
Behind the scenes, the Trump campaign was fielding attacks on his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, who has faced intense criticism in recent days for saying in 2021 that childless Democrats shouldn’t run the government, describing them as “miserable, childless, catty women.” (He included Harris in that description, even though she also has two stepchildren.)
In an interview with Megyn Kelly on Friday, Governor Vance said he has no complaints about women struggling to have children and supports their efforts to conceive through IVF, but defended his criticism of women who decide not to have children.
“Obviously, it was a sarcastic comment. I don’t have anything against cats. I don’t have anything against dogs. I have one dog at home and I love her,” Vance said. But, he added, “It’s true that we’ve become anti-family. It’s true that the left has become anti-children.”
Harris’ campaign announced that she will hold an event in Atlanta on Tuesday. This will be her sixth visit to Georgia this year and her first since Biden dropped out of the race and Harris began her presidential campaign. Harris is in the middle of a full-on campaign to nominate her running mate ahead of the Democratic National Convention.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), a possible running mate for Harris, planned to hold an event in the battleground state on Saturday. The Harris campaign said Shapiro would “kick off a weekend of activities in Pennsylvania marking 100 days until the election.”
Though the Turning Point USA summit was held just around the corner from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, many attendees focused more on religion than politics: Only a handful of attendees wore red MAGA baseball caps, and more people wore T-shirts with Bible verses or psalm numbers than anything political.
But Charlie Kirk, a Trump ally and president of Turning Point USA, reminded attendees why they were there: “Our mission is very simple: We exist to rid America’s churches of wokeism.”
The audience briefly booed when Kirk mentioned Harris. “Booing is easy. Registering to vote is hard,” Kirk said.
“Harris goes against everything we as Christians believe,” Kirk said.
Roza reported from West Palm Beach, Fla. Knowles reported from Clearwater, Minnesota. Meckler reported from Washington.
