Trump denigrates Harris as ‘lazy,’ invoking a racist trope against Black people
WASHINGTON — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Tuesday called Democratic opponent Kamala Harris “lazy,” criticizing the vice president with a word long used to demean Black people in racist terms.
“Who the hell takes off when you have 14 days left?” Trump said at a campaign event in Doral, Fla., aimed at courting Latino voters. “She’s lazy. She’s lazy as hell.”
Harris was spending Tuesday in meetings in Washington, D.C., and was scheduled to sit for recorded interviews with Telemundo and NBC to air Tuesday evening. It was the first day in more than two weeks that the Democratic nominee had no public events scheduled after a run of more than 14 consecutive days of travel to political events in pivotal states, including a three-state run on Monday, starting in Pennsylvania, continuing to Michigan and ending in Wisconsin.
Former President Trump recently told a mostly white crowd at a rally in Texas that his legal troubles are the fault of Black prosecutors he called racists.
Trump has often called Harris weak and disparaged her mental competence, as he did again Tuesday, referring to her as “slow” and as someone with a “low IQ.”
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Ian Sams, a spokesperson for Harris, noted that Trump canceled a Tuesday afternoon town hall with allies Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard before his evening rally in North Carolina.
“Donald Trump continuing his recent trend of canceling campaign events ... With just two weeks to go,” Sams wrote on X. “Granted, this one seemed like a real peach, so don’t blame them for wanting to call it off!”
The former president has questioned the work ethic of various opponents throughout his career. He accused Joe Biden in 2020 of campaigning from “his basement,” even as Trump continued to hold large events during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in 2016 he routinely called Democrat Hillary Clinton physically weak and low-energy.
Ever since Kamala Harris was named as Joe Biden’s running mate, President Trump and Republicans have lobbed scattershot, contradictory attacks that have focused on her race and gender — and now her citizenship.
Trump has also questioned people’s racial backgrounds — including Harris’ — and his use of racial dog whistles and overtly racist rhetoric have been fixtures of his public life.
The federal government sued Trump for allegedly discriminating against Black apartment seekers in the 1970s. In 1989, Trump purchased a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty after five Black and Latino teenagers, known then as the Central Park Five, were accused of raping and beating a white female jogger in New York City. They were cleared of wrongdoing in 2002 after another person confessed to the crime.
Now known as the Exonerated Five, the men filed a lawsuit Monday against Trump. They accused the candidate of making “false and defamatory statements” against them in his debate with Harris last month in which Trump wrongly stated that the victim was killed and that the wrongly accused suspects had pleaded guilty.
Using the term “lazy” to describe Harris, who is Black and of South Asian descent, evokes racist tropes that paint Black Americans as lacking a work ethic and being unsophisticated, submissive or inept.
After Donald Trump said ‘only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country,’ some Republicans urge him to focus on the issues.
Such stereotypes have been pervasive throughout American history. According to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the stereotypes had a purpose and “were used to help commodify black bodies and justify the business of slavery.”
“Yet laziness, as well as characteristics of submissiveness, backwardness, lewdness, treachery, and dishonesty, historically became stereotypes assigned to African Americans,” the institution found.
Despite these stereotypes, Black Americans have made progress economically, first through a period of mass migration known as the Great Migration, a decades-long stretch — roughly from 1916 to 1970 — during which approximately 7 million African Americans left the American South for the North for new job opportunities, and later through a burgeoning middle class since the enactment of landmark civil and voting rights legislation in the 1960s. Yet, due to myriad past and present structural barriers, there remains a persistent wealth gap between Black and white Americans.
Dueling narratives on Kamala Harris reflect a unique election: She’s poised to be the first woman of color to top a major-party ticket, and Trump is the first convicted felon to do so.
Trump increasingly has made his criticisms of Harris about her fundamental capacity and competence, suggesting an innate inadequacy that distinguished her from Biden.
“Crooked Joe Biden became mentally impaired,” Trump said during a rally in Erie, Pa. “Sad. But lying Kamala Harris, honestly, I believe she was born that way. There’s something wrong with Kamala. And I just don’t know what it is, but there is definitely something missing. And you know what, everybody knows it.”
Asked for comment about his attack on Harris, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt responded: “He’s right. Election Day is in two weeks, and Kamala Harris is taking the day off.”
Boak writes for the Associated Press. Beaumont reported from Des Moines. AP writer Jill Colvin in Miami contributed to this report.
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