In a speech aimed at rallying religious followers on Friday, US presidential candidate Donald Trump falsely accused election challenger Kamala Harris of being an anti-Semite who plans to enable the murder of unborn babies.
The vice president, who is married to a Jewish man, has gained ground on Trump in polls since replacing Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket a few days ago.
Former Republican President Trump spent much of his speech at a religious convention in southern Florida criticizing Harris’ record as a senator and Biden’s deputy, although many of his accusations were baseless.
Explaining why Harris, 59, skipped Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the US Congress on Wednesday to fulfill a prior obligation, Trump falsely accused her of anti-Semitism.
“She doesn’t like Jewish people. She doesn’t like Israel. That’s the way it is, and that’s the way it’s always going to be. She’s not going to change,” he said.
The remark — coupled with his claim that Harris “is totally against the Jewish people” in North Carolina on Wednesday — marked an escalation in Trump’s incendiary rhetoric, days after his campaign said an attempt on his life had given him a focus on unity.
The hour-long Friday speech, hosted by hard-right Turning Point Action, raised legitimate questions over Harris’s previous statements on policing, immigration and the environment that placed her to the left of current Biden administration policy.
But it was marked by hyperbole and falsehood.
‘Execute the baby’
Trump, a convicted felon battling many further indictments, falsely claimed that the Justice Department and FBI were “rounding up” Christians and anti-abortion activists and jailing people for their “religious beliefs.”
He also referred to Biden’s decision to withdraw from the election campaign as a “coup” by Democrats and claimed America was a “laughing stock.”
But he left his harshest words for Harris, calling her a “bum” and a failed vice president who had rejected federal judges because they were Catholic and would select “hardcore Marxists” to the Supreme Court.
He also falsely accused her of intending to force doctors to administer chemical castration medicines to minors, implying that she might cheat to win in November.
“If Kamala Harris has her way, they will have a federal law for abortion, to rip the baby out of the womb in the eighth, ninth month and even after birth — execute the baby after birth,” he claimed, in perhaps his most egregious calumny.
78-year-old Trump, the oldest major-party contender in history, is rushing to refocus his election against someone two decades younger, having anticipated to fight an 81-year-old incumbent Biden, who is plagued by health concerns.
Just last week, the former reality TV star was on cruise control as he received a hero’s welcome and the official presidential nomination at the Republican convention in Milwaukee.
Crowning glory
His finest achievement came a week after a gunman almost killed him at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania — an unprecedented episode that Trump promised Friday to memorialize with “a big and beautiful” new rally in the town, though he did not specify a date.
Seeking to become the first female president in American history, Harris is challenged with quickly organizing a campaign against an opponent who has been in near-constant reelection mode since becoming president in 2016.
Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, vowed support for Harris earlier Friday, as polls showed her reducing the lead that Trump had built over Biden, bringing the race to a statistical tie.
Harris, who was a top California prosecutor and senator before becoming the country’s first female and first Black and South Asian vice president, has highlighted Trump’s criminal history as well as what she called a Republican onslaught on “hard-fought freedoms” in US society.
Democrats seized on a Trump campaign move late Thursday that called into question whether he would debate Harris.
“It shows that he’s afraid,” Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a major Harris campaign advocate, told MSNBC.
“It shows that he knows that if the two of them are on a stage together, it’s not going to end well for him.”