TThere was a ton of racism and misogyny here. There were also death threats against former members of Congress. There was also the unusual sight of the Republican presidential candidate playing in the cab of a garbage truck, pretending to be a sanitation worker.
Donald Trump’s last full week of campaigning has been as immoral as it is bizarre.
His vitriolic rants and threats of violent retaliation against political opponents have intensified, and he has set aside Democratic rival Kamala Harris’ closing argument that the former president is “volatile and unhinged.” was difficult.
The former president’s extremist pledge to deploy military forces against what he labeled the “enemy from within” was unprecedented, including leading Democrats including Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff. .
But that was quickly overshadowed by other developments this week.
Voters next week will decide whether any of that ultimately matters in terms of who occupies the White House for at least the next four years. But history will record that the waning days of the 2024 presidential campaign were nothing like previous elections. One candidate leaned heavily into an agenda of hate and threat, and his followers made various attempts to deny, look away, or dismiss his comments.
The merry-go-round began spinning on Sunday when President Trump hosted a rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden. This is where swastika-wearing American Nazis gathered 85 years ago in the months before the outbreak of World War II. Even before Trump took the stage, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe caused a stir when he uttered a line that would become a major theme for the next few days.
“Right now, there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” he said, failing to elicit any laughs from the 20,000-strong audience.
The backlash was immediate and ferocious. Republicans joined Democrats in condemning the racist “joke,” while President Trump embarked on a mission to try to turn the situation in his favor.
Of course there was no apology. But at a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania on Tuesday, President Trump claimed, “Nobody loves the Latino community and the Puerto Rican community more than I do,” prompting a flood of anger, profanity, and racism. Referring to the famous Madison Square Garden event, he said it was a “festival of love” where speaker after speaker addressed immigrants and Democrats, and “the love was incredible.”
Pennsylvania’s 472,000 Puerto Ricans said President Trump withheld disaster relief funds and patronizingly threw paper towels at desperate residents after Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017. I remember that, but I saw it differently.
“This is not the first time our Puerto Rican community has felt disrespected,” Philadelphia voter Emele Ayala told the Guardian. “We don’t take that lightly.”
Joe Biden was embroiled in a firestorm earlier in the day after his comments about “trash” were interpreted by the Trump campaign as an attack on the candidate’s supporters. What the president meant was still under scrutiny Friday after it was revealed that the White House had falsified the official record of the president’s remarks.
But the episode also produced a stunt that provided perhaps the most ridiculous image of the week. Trump, wearing a Day-Glo safety vest, asks reporters, “Do you like my garbage truck?” On Nov. 5, before a car emblazoned with his campaign logo circled a Wisconsin parking lot in an attempt to show that his passengers, not his Democratic opponents, were “taking out the trash.” I ran to.
Other examples of President Trump’s blatant misogyny, as well as his vitriolic contempt for those who stand up to him, surfaced as the week went on.
On Wednesday night, he took up reproductive rights in Green Bay, Wisconsin, calling himself a “protector” of women despite dozens of sexual assault allegations and a judge’s ruling that he is a rapist. I tried to act like.
“Well, whether the women like it or not, I’m going to do it. I’m going to protect them,” he said, immediately drawing a rebuke from Harris.
Meanwhile, the vice president became a target of President Trump during an interview Thursday night in Glendale, Arizona, with right-wing extremist and disgraced former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. He claimed Harris was a “low IQ person” and “stupid as a rock”, repeating previous derogatory comments about his opponent.
But the biggest talking point in Carlson’s interview was President Trump’s labeling of former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney as a “radical war hawk” who wanted multiple guns pointed at her. That’s what I said.
“Let’s give her a rifle and stand there and let nine barrels fire at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it. You know. , when she had a gun pointed at her face,” Trump said of the politician who has campaigned with Harris. Arizona Democratic Attorney General Chris Mays said Friday he was investigating whether the comments amounted to death threats.
In response to President Trump, Cheney warned the public of the dangers of dictatorship and said he “wanted to be a tyrant.” This is not the first time this week that Mr. Trump’s representatives have spent much of the day insisting to the media that what Mr. Trump means is different from what he says.
President Trump repeated similar criticisms of Cheney later in the day in a post on his social network Truth, but omitted any mention of weapons apparently aimed at her.
Harris, who is scheduled to deliver her final speech over the weekend, left no doubt about her stance on President Trump’s actions when she addressed reporters in Madison, Wisconsin, on Friday afternoon.
“Anyone who makes such violent statements is clearly disqualified and unfit to be president,” she said.
“Donald Trump treats his political opponents as enemies, forever bent on revenge, and increasingly unstable and unfree.”
