Republican candidate Donald Trump has called her “crazy”, “insane” and “stone cold”. Republicans in Congress scorn her as a diversity appointee. Right-wing activists and trolls have slandered her with racist, sexist and sexist comments online.
Attacks on Kamala Harris, the first woman and the first Black and South Asian person to serve as US vice president, have intensified in the days since she has garnered support to become the Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee.
The derogatory racist and sexist attacks threaten to distract attention from the Republican Party’s concerted effort to focus on Harris’s policies. Trump’s allies, including some members of the “Black Americans for Trump” coalition, warn that insulting Harris could hurt him in reaching out to black voters, a key demographic in the Nov. 5 presidential election.
In interviews with nine Republican lawmakers who support Trump and 11 black Republican women, eight said Harris should refrain from personal attacks. While being cautious in their comments and emphasizing their continued support for Trump, several expressed concern over the tone of the attacks and whether the attack could hurt Republicans at the ballot box.
“I think there’s a way to criticize him without getting under his clothes,” said P. Ray Easley, a black conservative radio show host in Chicago and a member of the “Black Americans for Trump” coalition, a loosely organized group of black allies who support Trump.
Several members of Congress echoed his sentiments.
“I’m going to oppose Vice President Harris because of what she’s done, not because of her personality,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson, chairman of the 75-member Republican Main Street Caucus. “Some of this ugliness is inappropriate for a great country.”
Others said the attacks on Harris’s personal life were no different from the attacks Democrats have made on Trump’s personal and family life.
“This is a nasty fight. Democrats have a tendency to play the victim,” said Madgie Nichols, co-chair of Haitians for Trump and national director of the African American Voices of Faith and Freedom Coalition.
The tensions show that the Trump campaign’s efforts to link Harris to President Joe Biden’s record — particularly on immigration, crime and the economy — risk being overshadowed by personal attacks that show no signs of slowing down.
Republican pollster Whit Ayers, who has worked on campaigns for U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and others, said, “It’s extremely foolish to hire Kamala Harris as a ‘DEI hire.’” “It’s going to backfire,” Ayers said, adding that Harris has an incredible array of “very left-wing policies” that could be targeted.
DEI stands for “diversity, equity, and inclusion” initiatives that aim to increase the representation of women and people of color in the workforce to address long-standing inequities and discrimination. The term “DEI hire” is now used to suggest that someone is not qualified for their role and has been selected based on their race or gender.
Ayers said derogatory rhetoric would alienate women and “all people who are not on the far-right.”
The Trump campaign did not directly answer a question about whether they had discussed toning down personal attacks on Harris.
According to rhetoric experts, critics, and past opinion polls, Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric has encouraged people with racist beliefs to express their views.
The former president has a history of attacking political opponents, including other Black women in power like Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is prosecuting his election interference case in Georgia, and US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is the judge on the federal case against him for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
At a rally in North Carolina on Wednesday, Trump didn’t attack Harris on gender or racial grounds. Instead, he painted Harris’ potential presidency in horrific terms.
“She’s a radical left-wing lunatic who will destroy our country,” Trump said.
Trump spokeswoman Caroline Levitt said voters would reject Harris not because of her race and gender, but because of her failed policies.
A spokesman for Harris, whose nascent campaign has built a groundswell of grassroots fundraising and activism, said she was focused on her job.
“These attacks are backfiring, and even Republicans know that,” said Sarafina Chitika.
Obscene comments
Online attacks against Harris had surged even before Biden withdrew from the election on Sunday, according to researchers and a Reuters review of posts on the X platform, though precise data is hard to obtain.
Some of the recent posts mention sexual acts and talk about Harris’s past relationships in vulgar terms. Others insult her for not having biological children, which is reminiscent of comments made by Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance in 2021, when he criticized Harris and other Democrats, saying that “they are a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable in their lives.”
Harris has two stepchildren with her husband, lawyer Doug Emhoff. Emhoff’s ex-wife on Wednesday called such attacks “baseless” and described Harris as a “loving, nurturing, extremely protective” co-parent.
Disinformation researchers say online attacks do not come from any specific center, and have become so widespread that most accounts simply “amplify” existing narratives.
U.S. Rep. Michael Cloud, a member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, defended Republicans who have denounced Harris by calling her a “DEI appointee.”
“Those were actually Biden’s words,” Cloud said.
Biden has not called Harris a “DEI appointee.” In a campaign appearance with Harris in May, he spoke about the values of DEI and a diverse administration. “And that starts at the top with the vice president,” Biden said.
Trump has nicknamed Harris “Laughin’ Kamala,” mocking her laughter, and “Lion Kamala,” claiming she has tried to hide Biden’s aging from the public. At a rally on Sunday in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the former president called her “crazy” and “insane.”
Kelly Dittmar, a professor of political science at Rutgers University, said these nicknames promote stereotypes about women’s voices and emotions, as well as attempt to emulate an African American accent.
“The actual laughter and the guffaws are based on clichés about not wanting to hear women’s voices,” Dittmar said. “It’s not laughter. It’s meant to paint her as troublemaker. I think the nicknames are trying to point out the fact that she’s black.”
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who attended a closed-door meeting this week where party leaders urged members to focus on policy issues, told Reuters on Thursday he had not spoken to Trump or the Trump campaign about what message to send to Harris.
“This campaign will be about policy,” Johnson said. “And I think everybody will discuss that in great detail, and I think we will win on that basis.”
Easley, the radio show host, said he suggested to Trump campaign officials that they include more Black allies to counter Harris, “without any cover of racism.”
She and several other Black Republican women who spoke to Reuters said they did not like personal attacks, with some citing their own experiences of facing higher standards and expectations as Black women, or having their qualifications questioned.
“As a Black woman, I don’t like it when people start saying you get a job in DEI because of the color of your skin. I don’t think that’s fair to anybody,” said Corinne Rankin, vice chair of the California Republican Party, adding that she met Harris when they both worked in San Francisco.
However, Rankin said she thought Biden’s pledge to choose a woman or person of color as his running mate in 2020 allowed him to maintain that tenure.
Other Trump allies warned that his attacks could alienate some voters.
“I hope his advisers encourage Trump to withdraw it,” said Camilla Moore, chairwoman of the Georgia Black Republican Council. “Because it could be damaging in the long run.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
