Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Tuesday, October 22, called his 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, Florida, aimed at courting Latino voters. "She's lazy. She's lazy as hell."
Harris was spending Tuesday in meetings in Washington, DC, and was scheduled to sit for recorded interviews 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.
Trump has often characterized Harris as weak and challenged her mental competence, as he did again Tuesday, referring to her as "slow" and as someone with a "low IQ." Trump has also engaged in questioning people's racial backgrounds – including Harris' – and racial dog whistles and overtly racist rhetoric have been fixtures of Trump's public life.
The federal government sued Trump for allegedly discriminating against Black apartment seekers in the 1970s. In the 1980s, 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 woman jogger in New York City. The five said they confessed to the crimes under duress, later recanted, and pleaded not guilty in court. They were convicted after jury trials, but the convictions were vacated in 2002 after another person confessed to the crime.
The men, now known as the Exonerated Five, filed a lawsuit on Monday against Trump. They accused Trump 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 tropes that paint Black Americans as lazy, unsophisticated, submissive or inept. 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."
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.
Later, campaigning in North Carolina, Trump said, on a second day without public campaign events, that she "knows something that we don't know. I think she knows some kind of result that we don't know," suggesting she was trailing in the race. Trump went on to imply that Harris was chosen by Democrats to succeed Biden when he dropped from the 2024 race this summer for her race or her gender. "She's running because they want to be politically correct," Trump said.
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, Pennsylvania. "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."
Vice President Harris said Tuesday that her team is prepared to challenge Trump if he tries to prematurely declare victory in the 2024 election – but she's first focused on beating the Republican nominee. Harris said the Democrats "have the resources and the expertise" should Trump try to subvert the election. "This is a person, Donald Trump, who tried to undo the – a free and fair election, who still denies the will of the people, who incited a violent mob to attack the United States Capitol and some 140 law enforcement officers were attacked. Some – were killed. This is a very serious matter," she said.
Trump has been criminally charged with trying to overturn the 2020 election, and refuses to admit he lost to President Joe Biden. After a failed legal effort to overturn the results, a mob of Trump supporters rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, attacking law enforcement in an effort to stop the certification of the race.
At Harris' rallies, some of her supporters chant "Lock him up," something Trump often said about his former Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. Harris often replies: "The courts will take care of that. We'll take care of November."
At a campaign stop Tuesday, Biden said, "We've got to lock him up," but Biden quickly added: "Politically lock him up. Lock him out, that's what we have to do." "No president has ever been like this guy," Biden said. "He's a genuine threat to our democracy." "Every international meeting I attend," Biden added, specifically referencing his whirlwind trip to Germany last week, “They pull me aside – one leader after the other, quietly – and say, 'Joe, he can't win.' Democracy is at stake."
Harris told NBC that she's not focused on pointing out the historic nature of her candidacy, saying, "I'm clearly a woman, I don't need to point that out to anyone." She added that she's not worried about sexism harming her candidacy, saying she's focused on speaking to all voters. "I will never assume that anyone in our country should elect a leader based on their gender or their race, instead that that leader needs to earn the vote based on substance and what they will do to address challenges and to inspire people," she said.
The vice president also defended Biden, whose disastrous debate against Trump forced him to abandon his reelection campaign and cleared the way for her to become the Democratic nominee for president. Harris said she still believes Biden is "capable in every way" to be president, saying "you'd have to ask him if that's the only reason why" he dropped out of the race, but she has "no reluctance" in saying he's up for the job.