Former President Donald Trump laced into Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats on Thursday in a pointed and at times bitter speech as he headlined the annual Al Smith charity dinner in New York.
Donald Trump, in remarks that often felt more like a rally performance than a hilarious routine, repeatedly criticized Harris over her decision to skip the event in a break from presidential culture as she campaigned in Wisconsin.
She recorded a video that was played onscreen, but Trump called the decision “deeply disrespectful.”
“If you wanted Vice President Harris to accept your invitation, it seems you should have told her the funds were going to bail out the looters and rioters in Minneapolis and she would have been here, guaranteed,” said Trump, urging Catholics to vote for him in response.
“You better remember that I’m here and she’s not,” he said.
The white-tie dinner raises millions of dollars for Catholic charities and has traditionally offered candidates from both parties the chance to trade lighthearted barbs, poke fun at themselves, and show that they can get along or at least pretend to for one night in the election’s final stretch.
It’s often the last time the two nominees share a stage before Election Day.
Trump delivered several one-liners that drew laughs. But he also questioned the mental fitness of Harris and President Joe Biden, commented on second gentleman Doug Emhoff’s extramarital affair during his previous marriage, and made a joke about transgender women that echoed his frequent mocking of trans athletes on the campaign trail.
He said at one point that he would offer a couple of self-deprecating jokes before abandoning the effort. “Nope. I’ve got nothing,” he said to laughs.
“I just don’t see the point of taking shots at myself when other people have been shooting at me,” he said, referencing his survival of two assassination attempts this year.
Of Biden, he said, “If the Democrats wanted to have someone not be with us this evening, they would have sent Joe Biden.”
Later, he said the current occupant of the White House “can barely talk, barely put together two coherent sentences, who seems to have the mental faculties of a child. This is a person who has nothing going, no intelligence whatsoever. But enough about Kamala Harris.”
In the video she recorded for the occasion, Harris appeared alongside comedian and actress Molly Shannon, who reprised her long-running “Saturday Night Live” character Mary Katherine Gallagher, an awkward Catholic schoolgirl. She also poked fun at Trump for comments he made in Michigan, saying that mocking Catholics in the video would be “like criticizing Detroit in Detroit.”
Harris’ campaign had previously said that, with less than three weeks before Election Day, they wanted her to spend as much time as possible campaigning in battleground states that will decide the election, rather than detouring to heavily Democratic New York. Her team has told organizers that she would be willing to attend the dinner as president if she wins.
