As former President Donald Trump and his allies expressed outrage over President Joe Biden’s use of the word “garbage” to describe Trump supporters — Biden and the White House say he was speaking specifically about comedian Tony Hinchcliffe in response to his racist joke about Puerto Rico — the Republican presidential nominee took to the stage at a North Carolina rally on Wednesday to call his political opponents “corrupt, horrible people” and “criminal.”
“This election is a choice between whether we'll have four more years — think of this, four more years of gross incompetence, the most corrupt, horrible people. These are horrible people. Oops, we should get along with everybody. They're horrible people. Some people you just can't get along with,” Trump said seconds after beginning to speak in Rocky Mount, N.C.
Later in his speech, Trump implored his supporters not to “let ourselves be duped by these people. These are criminal people, as far as I'm concerned.” Trump, himself the subject of four separate criminal prosecutions, has long discussed wielding the federal government in his second term to punish his political enemies.
In his remarks, Trump seized on Biden’s comments from the night before, telling his supporters that the sitting president “finally said what he and Kamala [Harris] really think of our supporters.”
“They've treated you like garbage. They've treated you like garbage. You know what? The truth is, they treated our whole country like garbage,” Trump said before calling the undocumented immigrant population living in the United States “horrible.”
“You’re superior people, okay, not garbage. You’re superior people,” Trump later added.
On a campaign call organized by a Hispanic advocacy group on Tuesday night, Biden responded to Hinchcliffe’s description of Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage” at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday by saying “the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it's un-American.” The White House later sought to clarify that Biden was trying to say something along the lines of “supporter’s… demonization of Latinos” and Biden wrote on social media he was only referring to “the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump's supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage.”
Harris has distanced herself from Biden’s comments, saying “I will represent all Americans, including those who don’t vote for me” in comments to reporters on Wednesday morning.
But despite Trump’s frequent insult-ladened campaign appearances, promises to punish his political foes and recent references to “the enemy within,” the former president and his allies have singled out Biden’s comments in an attempt to paint Democrats as elites with distaste for Americans who support Trump.
“For the past nine years, Kamala and her party have called us racists, bigots, fascist, deplorables, irredeemables, Nazis and they've called me Hitler,” Trump said, recalling how his father “always used to tell me, ‘never use the word Nazi and never use the word Hitler.’”
He then implied he was unsure if his father was “looking down” on him from heaven — “my father is really questionable, because he was a little rough” — but would be outraged by the comparisons of his son to Adolf Hitler and Nazis.
Trump’s own longest-serving White House chief of staff, retired four-star Marine Gen. John Kelly, described him as a fascist who aspires to be a dictator in recent weeks. Trump’s former Defense Secretary Mark Esper said he agreed with Kelly’s assessment. Kelly also described Trump’s expression of admiration for Hitler and the military leaders of Nazi Germany during his first term, claims that Trump has denied.
In her “closing argument” speech to tens of thousands in Washington on Tuesday night, Harris painted Trump as an anti-democratic authoritarian “fixated on his grievances, on himself and on dividing our country” who would jail his political rivals, “use the United States military against American citizens who simply disagree with him” and “set free the violent extremists who assaulted those law enforcement officers” during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Harris gave the speech from the Ellipse near the White House where Trump addressed his supporters and urged them to march on the Capitol that day. Thousands ultimately attacked the building and briefly disrupted the certification of his 2020 Electoral College loss. His then-Vice President Mike Pence, who faced death threats after Trump urged him to illegally halt the certification of the election, has denounced the former president for his actions that day and is refusing to vote for him in this election.
On Wednesday at a rally of her own in Raleigh, N.C., Harris described Trump as “unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance, and out for unchecked power.”
“This is not someone who is thinking about how to make your life better,” she argued.
Trump edged out a slim victory over Biden in North Carolina in 2020 and no Democrat has won the state since Barack Obama in 2008, but recent statewide victories and the implosion of the GOP’s gubernatorial candidate this cycle has convinced Harris’ campaign they have a real shot at securing the southern state’s 16 electoral votes. Recent polls and polling averages have the two candidates virtually tied, with Trump holding a percentage point or two advantage in some polls. Harris' running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, was also campaigning in North Carolina on Wednesday and Trump's pick for vice president, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, is set to return to the state on Thursday and Friday.
“Every problem facing us can be solved, but now the fate of our nation is in your hands, and this is a very important state,” Trump told his supporters in North Carolina. “This Tuesday, you have to stand up and you have to tell Kamala that you've had enough, that you're not going to take it anymore. Kamala, you're fired. Get the hell out of here. Get out of here. Get out of here, Kamala. Get the hell out of here. The worst vice president.”