Donald Trump has reposted a blatantly misogynistic comment about Kamala Harris on Truth Social, repeating his previous sexist behavior and blatantly ignoring pleas from members of his own party to focus on issues rather than personal attacks.
With new polls showing Harris improving further — and the gap with her opponent among female voters widening — Trump has drawn criticism online for making a vulgar social media post suggesting the Democratic nominee owes her political rise to sexual favors.
The post – originally made by another user – featured photos of Harris and Hillary Clinton, along with the comment: “Funny how blowjobs affected both their careers in different ways…”
The comment was an oblique reference to insinuations surrounding Harris’ former relationship with San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. The mention of Clinton — Trump’s defeated opponent in the 2016 presidential election — was a reference to the affair between Monica Lewinsky, a former White House intern, and her husband Bill Clinton in the 1990s that nearly ended his presidency.
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It wasn’t the first time Trump had made lewd references to Harris. On August 18, he shared a video from the Dilley Meme Team, a group of right-wing content creators, set to the soundtrack of a parody of Alanis Morrisette’s song Ironic, with the lyrics, “She spent her whole damn life down on her knees,” as an image of Brown appeared behind a photo of the US vice president and her husband, Doug Emhoff.
But the latest post emerged Wednesday in a flurry of other extreme messages that also paid tribute to the QAnon conspiracy theory that holds that Trump is waging war against an elite network of Satan-worshipping pedophiles in government, business and the media.
He reposted, “WWG1WGA! RETRUTH IF YOU AGREE.” The acronym is an abbreviation of the QAnon slogan, “where we go one, we go all.” He similarly reposted another QAnon phrase, “nothing can stop what’s coming.”
The FBI has previously indicated that fringe theories like QAnon — which Trump has not endorsed but has praised its followers — are likely to fuel domestic terrorism.
In yet another inflammatory message, Trump posted manipulated images of some of his favorite targets — including entrepreneur Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, who led the US Covid-19 vaccination campaign, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi — captured and dressed in orange jumpsuits.
Harris’ campaign did not immediately respond to Trump’s latest burst of social media activity, which followed revelations about an altercation between his campaign team and staff at Arlington Cemetery, the final resting place of fallen American military heroes, during a visit on Monday.
However, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper said in a lengthy segment that the messages took Trump’s previous campaign to “a whole other level.”
“This is the Republican presidential nominee and the 45th president of the United States talking about two women who, regardless of what you think of their political views, are two of the most successful women in American political history,” Cooper said.
Wednesday’s online outbursts came after a new Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Harris with a four-point lead over Trump nationwide, 45% to 41%. Among women, the poll showed the vice president widened her lead to 13%, compared with an average of 9% in polls before July.
Another Fox News poll found Harris leading or increasing her support in four southern Sun Belt states, all considered key battlegrounds in November.
In a two-way race, Harris held a one-point lead in Arizona and two points each in Georgia and Nevada, while Trump held a one-point lead in North Carolina, the poll found.
Beyond the polls, there was also irritation among Republican strategists, who had previously urged Trump not to attack Harris personally and to focus on issues that matter to voters, such as the economy, inflation and immigration.
“I think people are incredibly frustrated,” said Jason Roe, former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party, told the Washington Post.
He said Harris’ campaign and policy positions “provided opportunities for the Trump campaign to talk about issues that actually matter to swing voters. And instead he’s delving into this nonsense.”
Stuart Stevens, a member of the anti-Trump Republican group the Lincoln Project and a strategist for Mitt Romney’s failed 2012 presidential campaign, disputed widespread predictions of a close election outcome by suggesting that Trump’s approach would ultimately alienate voters and allow Harris to win convincingly.
“There’s been a lot of talk about – it’s kind of a universal truth – that this election is going to be tight,” he told CNN. “I have a different view. I think it’s going to be tight until about October 20th, and then I think it’s going to be Carter versus Reagan [in 1980, when Reagan won in a landslide]that the bottom is going to fall out [of Trump’s campaign].
“I think this is going to be a race that the Democrats are going to win by a larger margin than Biden,” he added.
