With two weeks left in the close presidential election, Donald J. Trump escalated his vicious attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday, delivering a series of humiliating personal insults at two campaign events.
The onslaught mirrored a pattern from the 2016 and 2020 campaigns, when Trump ramped up his often violent personal tirades against his opponents as Election Day approached. He accused Hillary Clinton in 2016 and then-candidate Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020 of drug use without any evidence.
But allies of the former president have been toning down their personal attacks on Harris for months, as Trump faces tough polls and analysts predict a narrow lead in battleground states. He has urged Trump to focus on the issue. They expressed concern that Mr. Trump risks alienating undecided voters who may follow his political views but are put off by his harsh rhetoric. There is.
Mr. Trump shows no signs of following their lead, instead increasing the frequency and harshness of his insults, including using profanity against Ms. Harris on Saturday. Tuesday’s string of insults contained no swear words, but included many swipes that compared the U.S. vice president to an animal and raised baseless questions about whether she was a drug abuser.
Mr. Trump has expressed his disdain for Ms. Harris for months, but until now he had only used the most derogatory words about her in private. But as he becomes more insecure about her economic dominance and struggles to make any criticism of her stand out to voters, he increasingly uses various They have retreated into wild personal attacks. .
