Trump reposts crude sexual remark about Harris on Truth Social

Former President Donald Trump used his social-media website Wednesday to amplify a crude remark about Vice President Kamala Harris that suggested Harris traded sexual favors to help her political career.

The post, by another user on Truth Social, was an image of Harris and Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent in 2016. The text read: “Funny how blowjobs impacted both their careers differently…”

The remark was a reference to Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, and the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and a right-wing contention that Harris’ romantic relationship with Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco whom she dated in the mid-1990s while he was speaker of the California State Assembly, fueled her political rise.

Trump’s repost was the second time in 10 days that the former president shared content from his personal account making sexually oriented attacks on Harris. Though he has a history of making crass insults about his opponents, the reposts signal Trump’s willingness to continue to shatter long-standing norms of political speech.

The image Trump shared Wednesday morning was another user’s screenshot of a post on social platform X, and it was a reply to an unrelated video clip Trump had posted Tuesday night.

Trump reposted the image as part of a series of 30 reposts he made on Truth Social between 8:02 and 8:32 a.m. Wednesday, including several posts with references to the QAnon conspiracy theory movement and its slogan. Trump also reposted photos that called for the prosecution or imprisoning of top Democrats and members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The former president has vowed to direct federal prosecutors to investigate his political enemies if elected.

Previously, on Aug. 18, Trump had shared a video from the Dilley Meme Team — a group of right-wing internet content creators that makes pro-Trump videos and memes denigrating his opponents — that parodied the Alanis Morissette song “Ironic” to attack Harris as “moronic.” In the parody song, the singer says Harris “spent her whole damn life down on her knees,” at which point a photo of Brown appears on screen.

The Harris campaign, which has largely ignored Trump’s personal attacks, declined to comment.

Trump has repeatedly been accused of sexual misconduct and was found liable last year for sexual abuse and defamation. He has a history of attacking female opponents and critics in deeply personal terms, often describing them as mentally ill or at times expressing contempt in epithets.

Republicans close to Trump have expressed concern that he and his allies risk alienating women, Black voters and moderate swing-state voters if they continue to use racist and sexist attacks against Harris, the first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to accept a major party’s presidential nomination. Trump last week acknowledged that some of his advisers have urged him to move away from personal attacks, a shift he said he did not plan to take.

Last month, Trump questioned Harris’ identity as a Black woman, suggesting at a convention of Black journalists that Harris had used her racial profile as a way to gain a political advantage.

The Trump campaign did not initially respond to a request for comment. But after this article was published online, Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, complained about The New York Times and said that Trump, in his reposts about Harris, “rightfully calls to question her ability to be commander in chief.” The campaign did not respond to questions about the content of these posts and whether Trump intends to continue such attacks on Harris. Leavitt added, “The Failing New York Times spends more time airing negative stories about President Trump than writing about the negative consequences of Kamala Harris’ policies as vice president.”

Harris has for decades been subject to attacks like the ones Trump amplified, though they became more frequent during the 2020 presidential campaign, when she was President Joe Biden’s running mate. Critics pointed to her relationship with Brown as a way to question her qualifications. And after right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh suggested falsely, quoting from a conservative website, that Harris had “slept her way up,” T-shirts with the slogan “Joe and the Hoe” were worn by Trump’s supporters.

The slogan remained popular throughout Trump’s third presidential bid, and T-shirts bearing the phrase were frequently seen at Trump’s rallies up until Biden suspended his presidential bid.

Harris and her allies have over the years dismissed the claims that her relationship with Brown was central to her political rise, calling such attacks sexist and saying that she was qualified for positions she has held, including two state posts that Brown appointed her to, as well as winning elections as district attorney of San Francisco and California attorney general.

Trump frequently deployed gender-based attacks against Clinton in his successful 2016 campaign. Faced with criticism over his treatment of women and the release of the “Access Hollywood” recording in which he crudely boasted about grabbing women’s genitals, Trump repeatedly pointed to the sexual indiscretions of Clinton’s husband.

Throughout his political career, Trump has made a habit of sharing others’ divisive or offensive social media posts, then dismissing criticism by arguing he was simply reposting.

Last year, a jury found that Trump had sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll in a dressing room in the mid-1990s, then defamed her in a Truth Social post. Earlier this year, Carroll was awarded an $83.3 million judgment for continued attacks in social media posts.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.