In his final pitch to voters on the morning of Election Day, President Donald Trump called into Fox & Friends and spent the majority of his air-time complaining about everything —from Barron's "2 second" COVID-19 diagnosis to his opponent "Sleepy" Joe Biden getting too much air time on Fox News. But he reserved some of his harshest criticism for Biden’s running mate, Senator Kamala Harris.
After reportedly calling in almost an hour late, Trump once again attacked the Biden-Harris ticket with a tired conservative talking point, saying that if anything happened to Biden and Harris was required to step in as President, it would only end in disaster for...women.
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After insisting that Harris’ political leaning is “further left than Bernie Sanders,” Trump said, “She would be a terrible first representative. If she became the first woman president, I think it would be a terrible thing for our country. I think it would be a terrible thing for women.” He then added: “I think you’d have a country that would become a socialist country. If they pack the courts, that would be a terrible thing.”
"It would be a terrible thing for women" -- Trump on the prospect of Kamala Harris becoming president pic.twitter.com/sxdq75u2CL
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 3, 2020
The rest of the interview maintained a theme of Trump praising himself and criticizing everyone else. Though the data does not support it, he predicted that he would win with more votes than he had four years ago. While forecasting victory, he also devoted some of his interview time to disparaging Barack Obama and all of the congressional Democrats who have been “mean” to him during his time in the White House. When host Steve Doocy asked if Trump would try to prematurely declare himself as the winner based on circulating speculations, Trump kept his answer vague.
But his attack on Harris is far from new — though his method of calling her terrible for women might be an innovative approach. Following the vice presidential debate last month, Trump referred to Harris as “this monster” in an interview on Fox Business Channel. Asserting that current vice president Mike Pence “destroyed her,” in the debate, Trump said, “She was terrible. I don’t think you could get worse. And totally unlikeable. And she is.” Previously, Trump reserved the term “monster” only for terrorists, murders, and major natural disasters, but not so anymore.
Beyond that, Trump has repeatedly mispronounced Harris’ name at rallies and even went as far as to say that she didn’t know how to pronounce her own name correctly. “Kamala. Kamala. You know, if you don’t pronounce her name exactly right, she gets very angry at you,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Arizona. “And then she starts – you know what she does when she gets angry? She starts laughing. Uncontrollable laughs. That means she’s angry.”
While Trump was throwing insults at a wall and hoping one would stick, Biden spent the morning of Election Day visiting the cemetery where his son, Beau Biden, was buried. This contrast is probably the only thing we could have expected from Election Day with any certainty, as both will continue to make appearances in final attempts to draw in more voters until polls close this evening.