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“Trash” and “scum”: Trump has also demonized his opponents

“Trash” and “scum”: Trump has also demonized his opponents

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WASHINGTON — Five days before the election, former President Donald Trump and his campaign are trying to take full advantage of President Joe Biden's “garbage” remark, telling supporters it shows what Democrats really think about half the country.

But Trump, the Republican nominee, has a well-documented, long list of derogatory statements of his own, including using the word “garbage” to refer to his opponents in September and just last week calling the United States a “dumpster for.” the USA”. the world,” called his opponents the “enemy within” and described political opponents as “scum.”

Trump pounced – and didn't let up – after Biden appeared to call Trump supporters “trash.” During a Harris campaign Zoom call Tuesday night, Biden said, “The only trash I see floating out there is his supporters – his – his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable and un-American.”

Biden was responding to comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who called Puerto Rico “a floating island of trash” at a Trump rally on Sunday. Biden later clarified that he was referring to Hinchcliffe and not all Trump supporters.

But on Wednesday, Trump made the faux pas clear with props. On Wednesday, he climbed into a Trump-branded garbage truck to speak to reporters before wearing an orange safety vest at a campaign rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, that evening.

“How do you like my garbage truck?” “This truck is in honor of Kamala and Joe Biden,” Trump said, referring to his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, and the president.

The Trump campaign is working to make “garbage” the new “basket of deplorables” – the phrase Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton famously used in 2016 to describe a subset of Trump supporters, a faux pas that Trump- Supporters portrayed Clinton as an elitist.

But the strategy has refocused attention on Trump's own recent comments.

“It’s the people who surround (Harris).”. They are scum and want to destroy our country. They’re absolute trash,” Trump said at a September rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin. The clip was resurfaced by the anti-Trump Lincoln Project on Wednesday amid the “garbage” controversy.

The Harris campaign points to Trump's often polarizing rhetoric to suggest he is hypocritical.

“The candidate who called America a 'trash can.' Their rally called Puerto Rico “trash.” “Ride around in a garbage truck for fun,” Harris campaign spokeswoman Sarafina Chitika wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Is this a donation in kind?”

“Scum” and “enemy from within”

At a campaign rally last week in Tempe, Arizona, Trump said migrants entering the county through the southern border had turned the United States into a “dustbin for the world.” He has since used the phrase in subsequent speeches.

“We are a landfill,” Trump said. “We are like a garbage can for the world. That’s exactly what happened.”

Trump also used “trash” and “scum” last month to describe people close to Democratic nominee Kamala Harris – although the former president apparently didn't mean all Harris supporters.

The Trump campaign pushed back when USA TODAY asked about Trump's own use of “trash” and “scum.”

“Joe Biden called Trump supporters trash. He has offended more than half the country. Stop cleaning up for Joe Biden. This is pathetic,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s national press secretary, said in a statement.

Trump has also frequently used the term “human scum” in reference to those who opposed him beyond Harris or Biden.

“Happy Memorial Day to everyone, including the human scum who are working so hard to destroy our once great country,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post in May, before railing against the federal judge who told advice columnist E .Jean presided over Carroll's case against him.

Months later, Trump repeated “human scum” in a separate Truth Social post, this time in anger against the author behind “The Apprentice,” a biopic made about Trump early in his career, much to Trump's dismay.

“It is so sad that HUMAN SCUM, like the people involved in this hopefully unsuccessful enterprise, are allowed to say and do whatever they want to harm a political movement,” Trump wrote this month.

Meanwhile, Trump has suggested using the U.S. military to arrest what he calls the “enemy from within.” During an interview on Fox News this month, Trump said, “I think the bigger problem is the enemy within” when asked about possible violence abroad on Election Day, singling out the “radical left-wing lunatics.”

“It should be able to be handled very easily by the National Guard if necessary or by the military if really necessary,” he said.

Trump said the “enemy within” posed a greater threat than rivals abroad. “It’s the enemy within, all the scum that we’re dealing with, that hates our country,” Trump said on Oct. 11. “This is a bigger enemy than China and Russia.”

Harris has sought to distance herself from Biden's “garbage” remarks, telling reporters on Wednesday that she disagrees with “any criticism of people based on who they vote for.”

Biden quickly explained his “garbage” remark, which he made shortly after Harris appealed for unity and civility during a “valedictory speech” at the Ellipse Building in Washington.

Biden said he was referring to the comedian. “His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable. That's all I wanted to say. The comments at this rally do not reflect who we are as a nation,” Biden said.

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