Trump denigrates Harris as ‘lazy,’ invoking a racist trope against Black people

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Tuesday called his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris “lazy,” criticizing the vice president with a word long used to demean Black people in racist terms.

“Who the hell takes off when you have 14 days left,” Trump said at a campaign event in Doral, Florida, aimed at courting Latino voters. “She’s lazy. She’s lazy as hell.”

Harris was spending Tuesday in meetings in Washington, D.C., and was scheduled to sit for recorded interviews with Telemundo and NBC to air Tuesday evening. It was the first day in more than two weeks that the Democratic nominee had no public events scheduled after a run of more than 14 consecutive days of travel to political events in pivotal states, including a three-state run on Monday, starting in Pennsylvania, continuing to Michigan and ending in Wisconsin.

Trump has often characterized Harris as weak and challenged her mental competence, as he did again Tuesday, referring to her as “slow” and as someone with a “low IQ.”

The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, Ian Sams, a spokesperson for Harris, noted that Trump canceled a Tuesday afternoon town hall with allies Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard before his evening rally in North Carolina.

“Donald Trump continuing his recent trend of canceling campaign events… With just two weeks to go…,” wrote Sams on X. “Granted, this one seemed like a real peach, so don’t blame them for wanting to call it off!”

The former president has questioned the work ethic of various opponents throughout his career. He accused President Joe Biden in 2020 of campaigning from his basement, even as Trump continued to hold large events during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in 2016 routinely called Democrat Hillary Clinton physically weak and low-energy.

Trump has also engaged in questioning people’s racial backgrounds — including Harris’ — and racial dog whistles and overtly racist rhetoric have been fixtures of Trump’s public life.

The federal government sued Trump for allegedly discriminating against Black apartment seekers in the 1970s. In the 1980s, Trump purchased a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty after five Black and Latino teenagers, known then as the Central Park Five, were accused of raping and beating a white woman jogger in New York City. The five said they confessed to the crimes under duress, later recanted, and pleaded not guilty in court. They were convicted after jury trials, but the convictions were vacated in 2002 after another person confessed to the crime.

Recently, the men, now known as the Exonerated Five, filed a lawsuit on Monday against Trump. They accused Trump of making “false and defamatory statements” against them in his debate with Harris last month in which Trump wrongly stated that the victim was killed and that the wrongly accused suspects had pleaded guilty.

Using the term “lazy” to describe Harris, who is Black and of South Asian descent, evokes tropes that paint Black Americans as lazy, unsophisticated, submissive or inept.

Such stereotypes have been pervasive throughout American history. According to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the stereotypes had a purpose and “were used to help commodify black bodies and justify the business of slavery.”

“Yet laziness, as well as characteristics of submissiveness, backwardness, lewdness, treachery, and dishonesty, historically became stereotypes assigned to African Americans,” the institution found.

Despite these stereotypes, Black Americans have made progress economically, first through a period of mass migration known as the Great Migration, a decades-long stretch — roughly from 1916 to 1970 — during which approximately 7 million African Americans left the American South for the North for new job opportunities, and later through a burgeoning middle class since the enactment of landmark civil and voting rights legislation in the 1960s. Yet, due to myriad past and present structural barriers, there remains a persistent wealth gap between Black and white Americans.

Trump increasingly has made his criticisms of Harris about her fundamental capacity and competence, suggesting an innate inadequacy that distinguished her from Biden.

“Crooked Joe Biden became mentally impaired,” Trump said during a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania. “Sad. But lying Kamala Harris, honestly, I believe she was born that way. There’s something wrong with Kamala. And I just don’t know what it is, but there is definitely something missing. And you know what, everybody knows it.”

Asked for comment about his attack on Harris, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt responded: “He’s right. Election Day is in two weeks, and Kamala Harris is taking the day off.”