Harris says crude, racist rhetoric at Trump event fuels division

WASHINGTON – Vice President Kamala Harris said Monday that none of the vitriol in Donald Trump’s house Demonstration at Madison Square Garden will support the dreams and aspirations of the American people, but instead is “stoking the fuel to try to divide our country.”

He said Sunday’s Trump event, at which speakers hurled cruel and racist insults, “highlighted the point I’ve been making throughout this campaign.”

“He’s focused and really obsessed with his grievances, with himself and with dividing our country, and it’s in no way something that’s going to strengthen the American family, the American worker,” the Democratic presidential candidate told reporters. He was traveling to Michigan on Monday to continue his campaign with eight days left before the Nov. 5 election.

He said he would point out that “there’s a big difference between him and me” in the important campaign closing speech he plans to deliver Tuesday night on the Ellipse, near the White House.

In 2021, Trump, the former president and current Republican candidate, rallied his supporters during a speech on the Ellipse before telling them to go to the Capitol, where they rioted to try to overturn his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Harris also said: “What he did last night is not a discovery. It’s more of the same and may be more vivid than usual. “Donald Trump spends all his time trying to get Americans to point fingers at each other, he stokes the fuel of hate and division, and that’s why people are tired of him.”

The Trump campaign has tried to distance itself from what was said at the event, including one speaker who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”