As Election Day 2024 approaches and millions of Americans take advantage of early voting, Donald Trump’s attacks on Kamala Harris have become increasingly hysterical and personal in equal measure. In recent weeks, for example, the former Republican president has said that his Democratic rival was born “mentally retarded.”stupid‘ and has ‘cognitive problems’.
He has also tried to convince the public that the vice is “an individual with a low IQ,” a “stupid woman,” a “completely stupid person,” and “retarded.”
There are no shortage of problems with such rhetoric. The Republican candidate’s attacks are ugly, insulting, false and undeniably desperate.
But they also multiply. NBC News reported that Trump has now called Harris “lazy as hell” — a popular refrain among racists when describing black people — before suggesting she may have had substance abuse problems.
Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday night labeled Vice President Kamala Harris a “crazy” and “stupid” and questioned whether she had a problem with alcohol or drugs — the second time in the day he has made false personal attacks on his Democratic opponent.
Focusing on the vice president’s recent appearance on CBS’s “60 Minutes” — a topic Trump has become obsessed with lately — the Republican nominee told an audience in North Carolina, “She didn’t know where the hell she was going . Has she been drinking? Does she use drugs? I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I have no idea.”
There’s no point in taking such nonsense too seriously, even though there was one element that stood out to me: we’ve heard this nonsense before.
As regular readers may recall, Trump was concerned about his debates against Hillary Clinton eight years ago, so he said the former secretary of state might be abusing performance-enhancing drugs.
Four years later he did it again. In September 2020, the then-president whined incessantly about his suspicion that then-candidate Joe Biden was also on drugs. When asked during a White House news conference whether the attack was an attempt at humor, the Republican replied: “No, I’m not kidding.”
Earlier this year, ahead of his debate against the incumbent Democratic president, the former president told reporters, referring to Biden, “I’m saying he’s going to come out all fired up, right?” adding that his opponent would get “a shot in the ass” shortly before the debate.
Trump added shortly afterwards: “What happened to all that cocaine that disappeared from the White House a month ago?”
He shared a similar comment a week earlier in Wisconsin, suggesting that Biden was not only using illegal drugs, but actually doing so stolen cocaine found in the White House.
The outgoing president ultimately gave up his re-election bid, paving the way for Harris – who now also faces the same stupid accusations.
In other words, Trump’s playbook is really just one page.
This message updates our related previous reporting.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
