The Republican candidate sharply criticized the mental abilities of the current vice-president on Saturday. Remarks which provoked a reaction from associations defending disabled people.
Since the start of the American campaign, Donald Trump has not missed an opportunity during his rallies to criticize Kamala Harris, sometimes on her origins, sometimes on her record as vice-president. Saturday evening, in Prairie du Chien (Wisconsin), the Republican candidate attacked his rival in the race for the White House on her mental abilities, claiming that she was born “mentally defective” and comparing his actions to those of a “mentally defective person”.
“Kamala is mentally deficient. If a Republican had done what she did, he would have been impeached and rightly removed from office.”said Donald Trump when addressing the decisions made on border security by the Democrat as vice-president. After calling Kamala Harris a “very stupid” and distorted his first name several times, the former president continued his personal attack. “Joe Biden became mentally retarded and Kamala (Harris) was born that way. She was born like that. And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have gotten our country to this point.”he insisted.
“Inaccurate and hateful prejudice against people with disabilities”
These attacks caused associations of disabled people to react. «[Les déclarations de Donald Trump] say a lot more about him and his inaccurate and hateful biases against people with disabilities than it does about Vice President Harris or any other disabled person.”Maria Town, president of the American Association of Persons with Disabilities, told the Washington Post. This is not the former American president’s first slip-up on the subject of disability. The billionaire had also made fun of Joe Biden’s stutter on numerous occasions, or of a journalist suffering from a physical disability in 2015.
At the start of the year, the Republican candidate mocked Senator John McCain, who died in 2018 and has been disabled since the war in Vietnam where he was a prisoner of war. “John McCain, for one reason or another, couldn’t raise his arm that day”Donald Trump said in reference to John McCain’s vote against the Republican attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, while imitating him with his thumb facing the ground.
