Photo: Win McNamee Getty Images/Agence France-Presse Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign town hall at the Lancaster County Convention Center on October 20, 2024
Sébastien Blanc – Agence France-Presse in Washington
Posted at 1:18 PM Updated at 2:41 PM
- United States
Is this a carefully thought-out electoral strategy or just words dropped in the course of ramblings off the prompter? ? Donald Trump has been accumulating in recent days a series of publicly declared vulgarities that are unthinkable to millions of Americans.
The populist billionaire has never done things by halves, especially in private, but this succession of vulgarities uttered in public, in the middle of a campaign for the White House, surprises or dismays.
On Saturday evening, he was at a meeting in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. His plane displaying “TRUMP” in giant gold letters came to park on the tarmac of the regional airport where thousands of his supporters were gathered.
The 78-year-old Republican opened his speech with a surprising digression on local star Arnold Palmer (1929-2016), an American golf legend, explaining how other professional golfers were impressed by the champion’s genitals.
“When he took a shower with the other pros, they would say, ‘Oh my God, that’s incredible,’” Mr. Trump said.
“I had to mention it,” added the candidate, who was speaking to an audience largely composed of members of the white working class, who form his electoral base.
During the same event, the Republican directed a volley of insults at his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris Harris.
“You're a shitty vice president, the worst, you're fired, get out of here,” he said.
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Below the belt
In a podcast broadcast the day before, Donald Trump had expressed his surprise that the former tycoon Hollywood's Harvey Weinstein, convicted and imprisoned for rape and sexual assault, was “screwed.”
He used the word “schlonged,” an obscene term referring to the penis, which stunned observers.
Kamala Harris is a “failure who has less energy than a rabbit,” he also said last week.
And, even earlier, he called the vice president of the United States “crazy” (“ crazy”), “lazy” or even “real scum.”
To exploit the vein of baseness, the former business magnate uses several tactics: sometimes, he reposts shocking or racist messages on his social network.
He does the same in meetings, echoing insults thrown in the audience. Or he claims not to endorse offenses made by people he nevertheless cites.
On several occasions, he has thus clearly implied that Kamala Harris had benefited from a career boost thanks to her intimate relationship at the time with the former mayor of San Francisco Willie Brown.
He even reposted a video in which he suggested that the Democrat had spent part of her life on her knees, performing fellatio.
“Big pig of a husband”
Donald Trump has never been one to shy away from inappropriate language. We remember this old video, unearthed a month before the 2016 presidential election, in which he boasted of using his celebrity to “grab [women] by the pussy” (“ grab them by the pussy”).
And he has always loved to saddle his opponents with degrading nicknames, from “Crooked Hillary” (“ Crooked Hillary”) for Hillary Clinton to “Horseface” (“ Horseface”) for Stormy Daniels, the former pornographic actress at the origin of his criminal conviction in New York, via the word “scum”. (“ leaker“) to former FBI chief James Comey.
But Donald Trump has generally refrained from using harsh language as president or even as a candidate. That restraint seems to be gone, which may illustrate his nervousness in an ultra-tight race.
Here is the request he made Friday to female activists who came to listen to him in Detroit: “Tell your fat pig husband to get off the couch and vote for Trump. “
Some people around the Republican are worried that with these new excesses, he will alienate the party's most moderate voters, while every vote will count in the presidential election on November 5.
Kamala Harris has understood this well. This Monday, she will be joined on her campaign platform by Republican Liz Cheney, a figure of the anti-Trump right.
This woman, who has become the septuagenarian's bête noire, recently called on voters to reject Donald Trump's “depraved cruelty.”
Liz Cheney is “dumb as a broom,” the former president replied on his social network on Monday.