Personal attacks dominate US presidential campaign

Kamala Harris’ campaign is now using the same insults that former members of Donald Trump’s team have been hurling at the former president. The Democratic campaign has fresh ammunition after John F. Kelly, who was Trump’s chief of staff, said in an interview this week that Trump fits the definition of a fascist and warned that the former president could act as a dictator if he regains power. After these revelations, Harris said that Trump “is increasingly unhinged and unstable” and said that “it is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler.” The Republican candidate, meanwhile, continues to insult his rival, whom he called “stupid” and “lazy,” a term with racist overtones. The campaign has entered fully into the realm of the personal attack with less than two weeks until Election Day.

Trump has been using xenophobic and authoritarian language on a recurring basis. He still refuses to accept his defeat in the 2020 election and is accused of trying to overturn that result. Many of those who held positions of responsibility while he was president have turned their backs on him, including his vice president, Mike Pence. Joe Biden described Trumpist positions in the 2022 campaign as “semi-fascism.” The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, removed the “semi” and said that Trump is “fascist to the core.” And Harris herself, when asked why she could not say it openly, replied: “Yes, we can say it.”

It is, however, Trump’s former chief of staff who has developed the idea most clearly. In a series of conversations with The New York Times, Kelly elaborated: “Looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy,” he said. “So certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America. Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure,” he added. “He certainly prefers the dictator approach to government.”

According to Kelly, “Trump never accepted the fact that he wasn’t the most powerful man in the world — and by power, I mean an ability to do anything he wanted, anytime he wanted,” and Trump reportedly said that “Hitler did some good things, too.” Kelly and Milley’s voices are perceived as the possible sources of a report published by The Atlantic, according to which, in a private conversation at the White House, Trump is said to have said: “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.” This statement had already been revealed in 2022.

Following these revelations, Harris appeared at her official residence, the Naval Observatory in Washington, to attack her rival. “Trump does not want a military that is loyal to the United States Constitution, he wants a military that is loyal to him,” she said. She also described her rival as “increasingly unhinged and unstable.”

“We know what Donald Trump wants. He wants unchecked power. The question in 13 days will be, what do the American people want?” she concluded.

Joe Biden, who has been one of the most vocal voices regarding the threat that Trump poses to democracy, returned to the subject during a visit to the Democratic Party headquarters in Concord, New Hampshire, on Tuesday, where he made a somewhat controversial statement: “We gotta lock him up...politically. Lock him out. That’s what we have to do.” Trump’s campaign reacted immediately: “Joe Biden just admitted the truth: He and Kamala’s plan all along has been to politically persecute their opponent President Trump because they can’t beat him fair and square.” The president’s words serve his narrative in which he presents himself as a martyr.

Trump's insults

If there is anyone who can navigate the mud of the campaign trail, it is Trump. The former president descended into vulgarity on Friday at a rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, just outside Pittsburgh. He began by talking about the penis size of golfer Arnold Palmer, whom the regional airport is named after: “Arnold Palmer was all man, and I say that in all due respect to women, I love women… This man was strong and tough, and I refused to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros they came out of there, they said ‘Oh, my God. That’s unbelievable.’” Then he launched into an attack on Harris: “You’re a shitty vice president. The worst,” he said, to the delight of his supporters. “Kamala, you’re fired!”

Trump has been on the path of personal attacks since the beginning of the campaign. “Joe Biden became mentally impaired. It’s sad, but lying Kamala Harris, honestly, I believe she was born that way. And I just don’t know what it is, but there is definitely something missing. And you know what, everybody knows it,” he said in September in Erie, Pennsylvania. Trump has described his rival as “slow” and having “a low IQ.”

On Tuesday, he went back to the attack twice. First, at a rally with Latinos in Florida: “She’s lazy. She’s lazy as hell,” falling back on a racist trope about Black Americans. Later, during a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, he called Harris a “stupid person” and asked: “Does she drink? Does she do drugs?”

The economy, democracy, national security, immigration and abortion are among the issues that voters care about most, but they are increasingly making fewer headlines. With less than two weeks to go until the election, the electoral battle has become a duel full of personal attacks.

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