In the two weeks or so since President Joe Biden dropped his re-election bid and endorsed his Vice President, Kamala Harris, to take his place at the top of the ticket, Donald Trump increasingly focuses on the race and gender of his new opponent.
Harris, whose mother was Indian and her father Jamaican, would make history if elected president, becoming both the first female president and the first Asian American president.
Trump no longer has an older white man to compete against. At 59, Harris is about 20 years younger than Trump and is already trying to reach younger voters and voters of color who weren’t enthusiastic about Biden.
It’s a demographic that Trump is also trying to diminish. His response to his campaign against Harris has been to lash out with gender- and race-based attacks — efforts to undermine her credibility with some of those groups — while questioning her qualifications to be president and galvanizing his base.
However, this strategy risks alienating voters from the party because they feel the attacks go too far.
The Trump and Harris campaigns did not respond to requests for comment.
Below are some of the attacks Trump has unleashed on Harris since she became the Democratic presidential nominee:
Trump baselessly claims Harris ‘went black’ for political gain
Trump questioned Harris’ racial identity during a panel discussion at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago on Wednesday.
He claimed that Harris was an Indian-American woman until she “turned black” for political reasons.
Trump said he had known Harris “for a long time, indirectly” and claimed that “all she did was promote Indian heritage.”
“I didn’t know she was black until a few years ago, when she happened to turn black, and now she wants to be known as black,” he said, adding: “All of a sudden she changed and … she turned black.”
“Is she Indian or is she black?” he asked.
Harris is biracial. She is both Native American and Black.
After the NABJ performance, Trump posted on social media: “Crazy Kamala says she’s Indian, not black. This is a big deal. Blatant fake. She’s using everyone, including her racial identity!”
On Thursday, Trump again took aim at Harris’ racial identity, writing on social media about her “love” for her “Indian heritage” and posting a photo of her with her mother’s side of the family.
Harris attended Howard University, a historically black university, and was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the nation’s first historically black sorority.
‘Weak’
In an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham this week, Trump said that if Harris is elected, foreign leaders will treat her “like a toy.”
Trump made it clear that he based his assessment on her appearance.
“They look at her and say, ‘We can’t believe we got so lucky,'” he said. “They’re going to walk all over her.”
“I don’t want to say why, but a lot of people understand it,” he added.
Female politicians have long been questioned about their strength and whether they look like leaders. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton faced similar criticism when she ran against Trump in 2016.
“I think my words represent toughness and strength. Hillary is not strong. Hillary is weak, frankly. She has no stamina; she has none,” Trump said at the time on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”
Trump also said during the election campaign that he did not believe Clinton had “the charisma” to be president.
‘Dumb as a rock’
The day after Biden endorsed Harris, Trump posted a message on social media calling her “dumb as a rock.”
On Saturday, he said at a bitcoin conference in Tennessee: “I’m taking on a person with a low IQ.”
Trump frequently hurls insults at his opponents, whether they are male or female. But his criticism of women and people of color often echoes attacks that nonwhite men traditionally face in politics.
For example, Trump called one of his main opponents, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, a “bird brain.”
Trump promotes unsubstantiated claims about date of birth
On Thursday, Trump shared a post from far-right activist Laura Loomer, in which she said Harris “is NOT black and has never been black.”
“Nowhere on her birth certificate does it say she is BLACK OR AFRICAN,” Loomer wrote, adding that Harris is descended from slave owners, which should be further proof that she is not black.
However, it is a well-known historical fact that slave owners sometimes fathered children with women they kept as slaves.
Harris’ parents both emigrated to the US and she was born in California.
In 2020, Trump spread a baseless conspiracy theory based on his date of birth, claiming that Harris was unfit to be president.
Trump has also spread birther theories about Haley, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and former President Barack Obama.
Trump and other Republicans also often mispronounce Harris’ first name. Interestingly, he never had any trouble pronouncing “Joe Biden.”
‘Crazy’
Trump has repeatedly called Harris “crazy.”
“She is a radical, crazy person,” he said at a recent rally.
Women have long faced questions about their mental fitness and ability to regulate their emotions when running for office. And it was, again, an accusation Trump leveled at Clinton when he ran against her in 2016.
“The unstable Hillary Clinton lacks the judgment, temperament and moral character to lead this country — and I believe that so strongly,” Trump said at the time. “She’s really quite disturbed, and you’ve seen it, you’ve seen it a number of times. The people on the inside know it, the people who know her know it, and she’s like an unbalanced person.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
