close
close

first Drop

Com TW NOw News 2024

    • ‘Garbage’ and ‘scum’: Trump has also demonized opponents
    news

    ‘Garbage’ and ‘scum’: Trump has also demonized opponents

    Vaseline Posted on

    play

    WASHINGTON — Five days before the election, former President Donald Trump and his campaign are trying to milk President Joe Biden’s “trash” comment for all it’s worth — telling supporters it shows how Democrats really think about the half the country thinks.

    Yet Trump, the Republican nominee, has a well-documented, long list of disparaging remarks of his own, including using the word “garbage” to refer to his opponents in September, while last week referring to the United States as the ” dustbin for the US’. world,” called his opponents the “enemy within” and labeled political opponents “scum.”

    Trump pounced — and hasn’t let up — after Biden appeared to call Trump supporters “trash.” During a Zoom call for Harris’ campaign Tuesday night, Biden said, “The only trash I see floating out there is his supporters — his own — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”

    Biden was responding to comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who called Puerto Rico “a floating island of trash” during a Trump rally on Sunday. Biden later clarified that he was referring to Hinchcliffe, and not all Trump supporters.

    But on Wednesday, Trump highlighted the blunder with props. He climbed into a Trump-branded garbage truck on Wednesday to talk to reporters before wearing an orange high-vis vest that evening at a campaign rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

    “What do you think of my garbage truck? This truck is in honor of Kamala and Joe Biden,” Trump said, referring to his opponent Vice President Kamala Harris and the president..

    More: Harris breaks with Biden over ‘nonsense’ comments about Trump’s supporters after being reluctant to distance herself

    The Trump campaign is working to make “garbage” the new “basket of deplorables” — the phrase Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton famously used in 2016 to describe a subset of Trump supporters, a blunder that Trump- supporters used to portray Clinton as elitist.

    But the strategy has drawn attention back to Trump’s own recent statements.

    “It’s the people that surround (Harris).. They are scum and want to bring our country down. They are absolute garbage,” Trump said at a September rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin. The clip was resurfaced on Wednesday by the anti-Trump Lincoln Project amid the “garbage” controversy.

    The Harris campaign points to Trump’s often polarizing rhetoric to suggest he is a hypocrite.

    “The candidate who called America a ‘garbage can.’ Whose meeting called Puerto Rico “garbage.” Drives around in a garbage truck for fun,” Harris campaign spokeswoman Sarafina Chitika wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Is this an in-kind donation?”

    ‘Scum’ and ‘Enemy from within’

    At a campaign rally last week in Tempe, Arizona, Trump said migrants entering the country through the southern border have turned the United States into a “dustbin for the world.” He has since used the phrase in subsequent speeches.

    “We are a dumping ground,” Trump said. ‘We are like a garbage can to the world. That’s what happened.’

    Trump also used “trash” and “scum” last month to describe people close to Democratic candidate Kamala Harris — though the former president did not appear to mean all Harris supporters.

    The Trump campaign backed off when USA TODAY asked about Trump’s own use of “garbage” and “scum.”

    “Joe Biden labeled Trump SUPPORTERS as trash. He has insulted more than half the country. Stop trying to clean up for Joe Biden. It’s pathetic,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s national press secretary, said in a statement.

    Trump has also often used the term “human scum” in reference to those who have gone against him, other than Harris or Biden.

    “Happy Memorial Day to everyone, including the human scum who are working so hard to destroy our once great country,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post in May, then railed against the federal judge who oversaw advice columnist E .Jean. Carroll’s case against him.

    Months later, Trump repeated “human scum” in a separate Truth Social post, this time in anger at the writer behind “The Apprentice,” a biopic about Trump — much to Trump’s dismay — in his early career.

    More: Biden sparks Republican backlash after appearing to take a swipe at Trump supporters

    “So sad that HUMAN SCUM, like the people involved in this hopefully failed venture, are allowed to say and do whatever they want to hurt a political movement,” Trump wrote this month.

    Meanwhile, Trump has proposed using the US military to arrest what he calls the “enemy within.” During an interview this month on Fox News, Trump said, “I think the bigger problem is the enemy within,” when asked about possible foreign violence on Election Day, mentioning the “radical left crazies.”

    “It should be handled very easily by, if necessary, the National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military,” he said.

    More: Can Armed Forces Be Used to Destroy a ‘Domestic Enemy’ as Trump Suggested? Here’s what you need to know

    Trump has said that “the enemy within” poses a greater threat than foreign rivals. “It’s the enemy from within, all the scum that we’re dealing with, who hate our country,” Trump said on October 11. “That is a bigger enemy than China and Russia,”

    Harris has tried to distance herself from Biden’s “garbage” comments, telling reporters on Wednesday that she disagreed “with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.”

    Biden quickly clarified his “nonsense” comment — which came shortly after Harris appealed for unity and civility during a “closing argument” speech at the Ellipse in Washington.

    Biden said he was referring to the comedian. “His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable. That’s all I wanted to say. The comments at that meeting do not reflect who we are as a nation,” Biden said.

    Vaseline
    View all posts

    You Might Also Like