Source: Politics<\/p>\n
Former President Donald Trump tested out new attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris in front of a conservative audience on Friday evening, linking her to Biden administration policies on immigration and crime, with additional jabs at the state of California \u2014 and the pronunciation of her name.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s address on friendly turf at the conservative Turning Point Action Believers\u2019 Summit was in many ways a run of his frequent hits \u2014 that the 2020 election was \u201crigged,\u201d the end of Roe v. Wade was something \u201ceverybody\u201d wanted, and the U.S. has become a \u201cdumping ground\u201d for criminals from other countries.<\/p>\n
The former president\u2019s hour-long address was his second public speech since President Joe Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed Harris, and showcased Trump\u2019s efforts to regroup in real time against his new Democratic opponent.<\/p>\n
In the past few days, a rush of new polls have shown a much closer race between Trump and Harris<\/a> than Trump and Biden, and Republicans have struggled to settle on lines of attack against her<\/a>. At a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Wednesday, many of the former president\u2019s supporters acknowledged he now had a tougher race on his hands<\/a>. And his campaign signaled Thursday that he might back out of a previously planned Sept. 10 presidential debate, which would now feature Harris instead of Biden.<\/p>\n In his address in West Palm Beach on Friday, Trump took credit for Biden stepping down from the ticket, which came weeks after the president\u2019s disastrous debate performance. But Trump turned his focus more to Harris, beginning by calling her a \u201cbum three weeks ago.\u201d<\/p>\n As he ran through a range of familiar campaign issues at the summit, billed as an event to \u201cunite Christians across America,\u201d Trump threw out attacks at Harris on each one. On immigration, he called her the \u201cborder czar\u201d \u2014 a term Republicans have sought to attach to her diplomatic assignment working with Central American countries to address causes of migration, and that Democrats have tried to distance her from. Later, he suggested that Turning Point\u2019s next conference might as well be held in Caracas, Venezuela, because crime had dropped there while that country\u2019s criminals had left for the U.S.<\/p>\n He also sought to link Harris to a recently passed California law that bans school districts from outing trans children<\/a>, saying she supported \u201ctrampling on parental rights.\u201d And he tossed around several pronunciations of her first name, Kamala, over the night, saying he \u201ccouldn’t care less\u201d if he mispronounced it.<\/p>\n He argued the vice president would appoint a \u201chardcore Marxist\u201d to the Supreme Court \u2014 contrasting that with the three \u201ccourageous\u201d justices he appointed, citing their decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. He also defended that landmark 2022 decision as \u201cwhat the pro-life movement fought to get for 50 years\u201d and something that \u201call legal scholars\u201d wanted, accusing Harris of supporting extreme abortion policies.<\/p>\n Trump also argued that protesters who sprayed pro-Hamas graffiti in Washington on Wednesday were \u201cKamala Harris supporters,\u201d although Harris condemned them<\/a>. And he accused Harris, whose husband, Doug Emhoff, is Jewish, of \u201cnot liking Jewish people,\u201d and questioned how Jews or Catholics in the U.S. can vote for Democrats.<\/p>\n \u201cWith four more years of Harris, who was worse than Joe Biden in a true sense, and far more liberal, America will be decimated by migrant crime, demolished by fascism, ravaged by rampant inflation and impoverished by the complete obliteration of American energy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In a statement, Harris campaign spokesperson James Singer said Trump \u201cgenerally sounded like someone you wouldn\u2019t want to sit near at a restaurant \u2014 let alone be President of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAmerica can do better than the bitter, bizarre, and backward-looking delusions of criminal Donald Trump. Vice President Kamala Harris offers a vision for America’s future focused on freedom, opportunity, and security,\u201d Singer said.<\/p>\n Concluding his remarks, Trump told the audience that it was important for Christians to get out and vote in November.<\/p>\n Four years from now, he argued, the country will be \u201cfixed so good you\u2019re not going to have to vote.\u201d<\/p>\n