In his decades in the spotlight, former President Donald Trump has a long history of making derogatory and racist comments about women, people of color and basically anyone who crosses his path.
It’s a tendency that dates back to his days as a reality star and has only intensified in the meme-driven age of social media. In the words of Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., Trump is “an equal opportunity offender.”
But in Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump has found a particularly complicated and risky target for his signature offense as more Americans turn their attention to what has become a highly competitive race.
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While there are no clear signs that Trump is increasingly insulting his opponents, his decision to post a series of sexually and racially charged tirades in recent weeks suggests that he is increasingly raising the bar when it comes to sheer vulgarity and crudeness.
That eagerness to offend is likely to gain traction as the election enters its final stretch. With both major parties vying for women and moderate voters in swing states, Trump could potentially alienate an undecided audience uncomfortable with his crude rhetoric.
Since July 21, when President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris, Trump has fired a seemingly relentless barrage of insults at a challenger who happens to be Black, South Asian and a woman.
In just over five weeks, Trump has, in speeches, social media posts and interviews, called Harris a “nutcase”; a “communist”; “dumb as a rock”; “real trash”; “a bum”; and, in a phrase he applies almost exclusively to women, “gross.” In early August, he reposted an image of Harris dressed as a dung beetle, her face covered in what appears to be blackface, as she sits on a coconut. And he has made or amplified innuendos about his opponent’s long-standing relationship with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, suggesting that she traded sexual favors to advance her political career.
“She had a very good friend named Willie Brown,” Trump said at a rally on August 3. “He knows more about her than anyone ever did. He could tell you everything about her, he could tell you stories you don’t want to hear.”
At a conference for black journalists in Chicago last month, he questioned Harris’ racial identity, saying she only recently “became a black person.” And in addition to a post on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday that made a crude reference to Harris and oral sex, Trump this month shared a parody video of a singer saying Harris has spent her life “on her knees.”
In a statement, James Singer, a spokesman for Harris, called Trump “crazy,” adding: “If a family member posted what Donald Trump is sharing today, Americans would rightly be concerned.”
Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to questions about his social media posts and reposts or the language he uses when attacking his opponents. Instead, asked to address concerns that Trump risked alienating key voters, the campaign said that “women deserve a president who will secure our country’s borders, remove violent criminals from our neighborhoods and build an economy that helps our families thrive — and that’s exactly what President Trump will do.”
In rallies and other public forums, Trump has continued to use foul language, using the phrase “son of a bitch” at least a dozen times since announcing his reelection campaign in November 2022, and variations on the word “shit” dozens of times over that period. He used the word “fucking” twice in a single speech last year in North Carolina.
Harris, on the other hand, has been sparing, using the word once in May and using the term “half-baked” during her Democratic Party acceptance speech.
But it’s on the internet where much of the crude political discourse takes root. For Trump, a primary driver is the almost symbiotic relationship he’s developed with his supporters on Truth Social, which he launched in early 2022.
Though he returned to the X platform this month, nearly all of the inappropriate content Trump spreads has remained confined to his own site, which has become something of an echo chamber for MAGA content.
In this politically homogeneous, uncritical context, Trump’s posts are constantly responded to with racist and sexist memes by ardent followers hoping the former president will repost them, a badge of honor in MAGA circles. In recent weeks, social media has been awash with digitally manipulated and graphic images of Harris taken by Trump’s supporters, showing her in sexual situations, often unclothed or in lingerie.
The post Trump shared on Truth Social on Wednesday — a screenshot of X showing an image of Harris and Hillary Clinton and another user’s response: “Funny how blowjobs affected their careers in different ways…” — was a response to one of Trump’s own posts on the site.
An anonymous account with the handle @beware_the_penguin posted the screenshot to Truth Social. In recent weeks, that same account has uploaded and shared dozens of highly sexualized images of Harris on the platform. At least one other, more PG-rated post from that account, in which Harris hides under a table from reporters, was also reposted by Trump.
The oral sex comment came from a pro-Trump podcaster who calls himself Zeek Arkham. The remark is a reference to Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, who admitted to having a sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, and to Harris’ relationship with Brown in the mid-1990s.
It appears the post on Truth Social with the screenshot has since been deleted.
On Wednesday, the person who runs the Zeek Arkham account on X posted that he “wants to apologize because you’re too stupid to vote for someone who actually made the country better,” adding, “I made a dirty joke. You vote for one.”
That person has previously identified himself as a former New York Police Department officer named Ezequiel Arkham, but no such person could be located. The New York Times could not immediately confirm the identity of that account or the @beware_the_penguin account on Truth Social.
Trump reposted the sexual content — or, in the jargon of Truth Social, revealed the truth — amid a furious wave of activity on his social media platform.
On Wednesday, he boosted at least four posts referencing the QAnon conspiracy theory, as well as doctored images showing Harris and other Democratic leaders in orange prison jumpsuits and other posts calling for former President Barack Obama to be tried in a military court.
In the past, Trump has used the platform and Instagram to attack Biden, reposting several videos that portrayed the president as weak. These videos were created by a group of pro-Trump content creators called the Dilley Meme Team.
In January, he called Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who was then challenging him for the Republican presidential nomination, “Nimrada” on Truth Social, a misspelling of her first name, Nimarata, which was interpreted as a racial slur meant to emphasize her identity as a child of South Asian immigrants.
It echoes a series of posts from Trump this month in which he referred to the vice president as “Kamabla” instead of Kamala.
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