So much for unity. In Charlotte rally, Trump proved he hasn’t changed a bit | Opinion
Donald Trump’s “unity” schtick sure didn’t last very long.
He even admitted as much in Charlotte Wednesday, during a rally in which he railed against “his new victim to defeat,” whom he anointed with the nickname “Lyin’ Kamala Harris.”
“When you’re dealing with these people, they’re very dangerous people, when you’re dealing with them, you can’t be too nice,” Trump told the crowd at his first campaign appearance since President Joe Biden’s sudden exit from the race. “So if you don’t mind, I’m not going to be nice.”
What followed was a roughly 90-minute rant in which Trump fulfilled that promise. At various points throughout his speech, Trump called Harris “crazy,” “unfit to lead,” “the original Marxist,” “a radical left lunatic who will destroy our country” and “the most incompetent and far left vice president in American history.”
Trump attempted to pin responsibility for the current administration’s actions squarely upon Harris herself, the “ultra-liberal driving force behind every Biden administration catastrophe,” he said.
“She shouldn’t even be allowed to run for president for what she’s done. She’s committing crimes,” Trump, who has been indicted four times and convicted of 34 felonies, said.
Trump also made wildly exaggerated and outright false claims about Harris’ record, including that Harris is a “radical crazy person on abortion” because she “wants abortion right up to birth and even after birth.” That’s an oft-repeated talking point from Republicans that has been debunked.
The list of complaints about Harris was so exhaustive that Trump even warned that she wants to “ban red meat.”
“That means no more cows, you know, this is serious,” Trump said.
Because it couldn’t be a Trump rally without him mentioning crowd sizes, Trump bemoaned the media for mentioning the crowd sizes at Harris’ events but not his, and suggested that the Harris campaign must have bribed people to show up at their event.
Trump’s fellow Republicans at the rally also didn’t bother much with the whole unity thing. That included U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop, who told supporters in an email ahead of the event that Trump would be joining him at a rally instead of the other way around. Bishop spoke about Democrats supposedly defunding the police and attacked Jeff Jackson, his fellow congressman and opponent in the upcoming election for North Carolina attorney general, as radical and “soft on crime.” Bishop seemed particularly eager to tie Jackson to Harris, calling them both “Soros prosecutors posing as moderate and reasonable and mainstream.”
“The progressive Democrats are out to destroy you, your families, your country, everything you’ve worked for and valued,” Bishop warned the crowd.
Why bother with unity when you can go with some good old-fashioned fearmongering instead, right?
Of course, no one really expected the GOP’s rhetorical makeover to pan out. It was, after all, only a matter of time before the attacks on Harris began.
While Trump largely avoided overt racist or sexist attacks on Harris at Wednesday’s rally, he refused to pronounce her first name correctly, something that has become so common among Republicans that The Washington Post assembled a tracker at the Republican National Convention.
On Wednesday, he labeled her “Lyin’ Kamala Harris,” though in recent days he has also referred to her as “Dumb as a Rock Kamala” and mocked her laugh by calling her “Laughing Kamala.” Some Republican politicians have called her a “DEI hire” or a “DEI president” and suggested she wasn’t even qualified to be vice president, let alone president, despite her lengthy resume as a prosecutor, attorney general and U.S. senator.
Trump claimed at the GOP convention not too long ago that, after surviving an assassination attempt, he was a changed man who would be a president for “all of America.”
But Wednesday’s rally made it clear: no matter what happens, and no matter who he’s running against, he’s still the same old Trump. He just can’t help himself.
This story was originally published July 24, 2024 at 10:03 PM.
