In Erie, Donald Trump twice suggests Kamala Harris is ‘mentally retarded’

During a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Sunday, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump suggested that Vice President Kamala Harris is “mentally retarded.” second time in so many days, he questioned his opponent’s mental capacity, despite widespread criticism for doing so.

“Lyin’ Joe Biden became mentally retarded, but lien Kamala Harris, honestly, I think she was born that way,” Trump said at an afternoon rally in Erie. “There’s something wrong with Kamala, I just don’t know what, but there’s definitely something missing.”

Trump later called the vice president a “stupid person.”

During a Saturday rally in Wisconsin, the former president falsely declared that Harris was born “mentally retarded” and that her actions were those of a “mentally retarded person,” which was met with swift criticism from disability advocates.

Several leading Republicans and some Trump allies distanced themselves from the comments this weekend, saying they were unhelpful to the campaign.

“The better solution is to prosecute a case where its policies are destroying the country,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.). during a Sunday morning interview with CNN. Former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican running for Senate, she stated that Trump’s comments were as such “offends not only the vice president, but also people who actually have mental disabilities.”

Trump began using the language halfway through a two-hour speech at the Lake Erie Convention Center on Sunday afternoon. He spent most of the speech talking about immigration – Pennsylvania voters favor him over Harris on the issue – saying he was frustrated with the crisis at the southern border and admitting that “I’m a little rougher than normal.”

The former president sharply criticized migrants, calling people crossing the border “brutal, cruel, more brutal than anything you can imagine” and saying his administration would not tolerate “gangs of migrants and bandits.”

He added: “They come to our cities and small towns here in Pennsylvania and across the country. These cities are petrified. Even if they aren’t there yet, they will be there.”

» READ MORE: Trump’s message on immigration is full of misinformation. But it works in Pa.

Trump relied heavily on up-to-date data released by the Department of Homeland Security under President Joe Biden on immigrant convictions. He said Harris “let in 25,272 illegal aliens convicted of rape and other sex crimes” and “let in 13,099 convicted murderers.”

But this is a misrepresentation of the numbers. The report included decades of aggregate data and included immigrants who came to the country under previous administrations, including Trump’s.

Trump’s remarks came two days after Harris traveled to Arizona to give a speech near the U.S.-Mexico border, during which called for stricter immigration enforcement and executive actions that would go further in restricting border crossings than those Biden signed into law this year.

During that speech, Harris also emphasized her support for the border security bill, which was authored by a bipartisan group of senators but never came to a vote after Trump opposed it.

Trump reacted sharply to Harris in Erie, talking about her support for stronger border security: “Why didn’t she do this almost four years ago? Why didn’t she do it?”

Trump’s rally comes amid intense campaigning in Pennsylvania, which runs five weeks through Nov. 5, and mail-in voting is already underway across the battleground state.

On Saturday, Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), rallied in Newtown in Bucks County, a key swing county. The campaign announced that former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. he will campaign for Trump in Philadelphia. Trump returns to Pennsylvania on Saturday for a rally in Butler, where a gunman tried to murder him two months ago.

On the Democratic side, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Randi Weingarten, president of the national teachers union, gathered with Harris campaign volunteers in Montgomery County on Sunday morning. Gov. Josh Shapiro joined writer-producer Shonda Rhimes at a meeting in Plymouth on Saturday. On Wednesday, Harris gave a major speech on economics in Pittsburgh.

Erie itself is a dominant county that was won twice by former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, but Trump carried it in 2016. It returned to the Democratic Party four years ago and gave a majority of its votes to President Joe Biden.

Trump alluded to the county’s boomerang growth, saying: “Erie County was known as a Democratic area until Trump came along. And then they said… “What the hell happened to Erie County?”