Donald Trump, the former president and now three-time Republican nominee, has shifted his campaign focus onto his new likely opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

He's shifted his attacks onto her so broadly that he now insists Harris is behind everything the Biden-Harris administration has done over the past four years, that she is "far more liberal" than Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, that she has been rated the "worst vice president in history" and that she "destroyed San Francisco."

In fact, his nickname for her has shifted from "Laffin’ Kamala" to "Lyin’ Kamala," which was a prelude to his announcement that he’d be moving away from a supposed stance to focus on unity.

"I was supposed to be nice. They say something happened to me when I got shot — I became nice," Trump said. "But when you’re dealing with these people — they’re very dangerous people — you can’t be too nice…so if you don’t mind, I’m not gonna be nice. Is that OK?" he asked the crowd of his North Carolina rally.


What You Need To Know

  • Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump set the focus of his attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris at his latest rally in North Carolina Wednesday night

  • Trump began blaming Harris for all of his issues with the Biden-Harris administration, asserting that she's been behind everything the White House has done

  • The former president was also given an endorsement by the National Organization of Police Associations

 

His rally was almost entirely a rebuke of Harris as a person and a politician, including the campaign strategy being promoted by Democrats as a meeting of the prosecutor — former California Attorney General Harris — against the felon — Trump, who has been convicted of 34 felonies and faces felony charges in both federal court and the state of Georgia.

Trump dismissed his conviction on 34 felony charges in New York as being brought by "Marxist" prosecutors. America, he said, isn’t going to buy the "prosecutor vs. felon" dichotomy — Harris was previously California's attorney general and the district attorney of San Francisco — especially because he "won" the Florida documents case (via its dismissal earlier this month).

The Florida documents case, of course, is the federal case brought about by special counsel Jack Smith and overseen by Trump-nominated U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon. Smith, Cannon ruled, was "improperly appointed." Her ruling has been broadly questioned by legal scholars — and the Justice Department has already said it will appeal.

His Democratic opponents, Trump said, are "stupid, low IQ people," and Harris is a "radical, crazy person on abortion," before falsely insisting that Harris is in favor of post-birth abortion of healthy babies.

Trump also alleged that Harris is "against the Jewish people" for not attending Wednesday's Congressional address by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Harris is scheduled to meet privately with Netanyahu on Thursday, as is President Biden; additionally, Harris is married to a Jewish man, second gentleman Doug Emhoff.)

He also, again, wondered aloud how Jewish Americans can vote for Democrats, raising a fallacious talking point similar to his previous insistences that Jewish people who vote for Democrats "hate Israel."

He ficticiously asserted that Harris has been in "pursuit of open borders" and said that she has called for "mass amnesty" for migrants. He also mocked her appointment as "border czar," placing the onus of illegal imigration on her shoulders. (Harris was never "border czar"; while she has been made a point person on immigration within the White House, she was tasked with solving "root causes" of immigration. A report reviewing two years of the program which showed that results are mixed, but have been improving.)

Trump was, however, endorsed by the National Organization of Police Associations, the union of police officer unions, with an announcement by Border Patrol agent union president Brandon Judd. Judd, who has been fiercely critical of the Biden administration, has suggested that Democrats are "trying to change the demographics of the electorate" in interviews, a tenant of the "great replacement" theory often espoused by white supremacists.