Trump’s Answer to Harris’s Border Trip: Calling Her ‘Mentally Disabled’

Trump’s Answer to Harris’s Border Trip: Calling Her ‘Mentally Disabled’

Former President Donald J. Trump assailed Vice President Kamala Harris in harshly personal terms in what he conceded was “a dark speech.”

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By Michael Gold

Reporting from Prairie du Chien, Wis.

The day after Vice President Kamala Harris visited the southern border and pledged to crack down on asylum and beef up security, former President Donald J. Trump unleashed a string of sharply personal attacks on her at a rally on Saturday, expressing contempt for her intelligence and calling her “mentally disabled.”

In a dark, often rambling speech lasting longer than an hour, Mr. Trump — whose advisers have urged him to focus on policy issues rather than on personal jabs — notably escalated his attacks against Ms. Harris. Mr. Trump, who has often questioned President Biden’s mental abilities, told supporters at a rally in Prairie du Chien, Wis., that “Joe Biden became mentally impaired; Kamala was born that way.”

Mr. Trump then tied Ms. Harris to the Biden administration’s border policies, adding, “And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country.” Later, he criticized her remarks at the border on Friday as “bullshit.”

It was a startling series of broadsides in the midst of a presidential campaign, even for a candidate who seems to delight in offensive remarks. Mr. Trump’s speech in Prairie du Chien, a town of about 5,000 people along the Mississippi River, was meant to serve as a response to Ms. Harris’s border visit, in Douglas, Ariz., where she promised to crack down on asylum and called for tougher punishments against those who cross the border illegally. Those positions, an attempt to address a political vulnerability, made up the core of one of the toughest speeches on immigration and border policy that a Democrat has made in a generation.

But Mr. Trump, who stood surrounded by posters of undocumented immigrants accused of violent crimes, attacked Ms. Harris for being a political opportunist. And he claimed that she bore responsibility for migrants who have come into the country illegally and committed crimes.

“She is a disaster,” Mr. Trump said. “And she is not ever going to do anything for the border, and she didn’t even want to get tough now, except her poll numbers were tanking.”

The polls show the candidates locked in a tight race. And in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, 69 percent of likely voters described Ms. Harris as intelligent, including 71 percent of independent voters. That is higher than the 60 percent who said the same of Mr. Trump.

As he warns Americans of a “migrant crime” wave — even while the F.B.I. has reported that murders in the United States dropped in 2023 at the fastest rate on record — Mr. Trump often points to high-profile crimes that the authorities have said involved undocumented immigrants. On Saturday, he ceded the microphone at one point to Patty Morin, the grieving mother of Rachel Morin, 37, who the authorities say was raped and murdered by an undocumented immigrant last year while jogging in Maryland.

Throughout his speech, Mr. Trump continued to vilify undocumented immigrants with incendiary language, calling them “stone-cold killers” and blaming them for other societal ills.

At one point, Mr. Trump acknowledged the grim nature of his remarks. “Isn’t this a wonderful and inspiring speech?” he joked. “I got people sitting in the front row — they’re going, ‘Oh, my god.’” Later, he added, “I’m just saying, this is a dark — this a dark speech.”

The Harris campaign declined to respond to Mr. Trump’s personal attacks. Sarafina Chitika, a Harris campaign spokeswoman, said in a statement that Mr. Trump was “finally telling the truth to voters: He’s got nothing ‘inspiring’ to offer the American people, just darkness.”

Even as Mr. Trump delivered remarks about immigration, which his campaign sees as a signature issue that could help him win in critical battleground states, he frequently veered off course, following a number of familiar tangents, including questioning climate change, accusing Ms. Harris of lying about having worked at McDonald’s and attacking Mr. Biden’s appearance.

Mr. Trump revived his threat to prosecute people who are found to “cheat on this election” if he were to win in November. And, repeating his false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, which he lost, he added that he would also “go back to the last” election and prosecute people for supposed voter fraud “if we’re allowed.”

Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris appear to be locked in a tight race in Wisconsin, as she has lost some of the edge that she held in the immediate weeks after she replaced Mr. Biden on the Democratic ticket. New polling from The Times and Siena College found Ms. Harris leading Mr. Trump in Wisconsin, 49 percent to 47 percent.

Hamed Aleaziz and Ruth Igielnik contributed reporting.