Republicans criticize Trump over his insults of Harris

Former President Donald Trump drew criticism from several fellow Republicans on Sunday for his demeaning insults of Vice President Kamala Harris, a day after he called her “mentally disabled” and “mentally impaired” at a rally.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., pushed back on Trump’s remarks Sunday. “I just think the better course to take is to prosecute the case that her policies are destroying the country,” Graham said on CNN, adding that he did not think Harris was crazy but did think her policies were.

Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn. – who has been helping Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, Trump’s running mate, prepare for his upcoming debate – also sought to distance himself from Trump’s personal attacks. “I think we should stick to the issues,” Emmer said on ABC News.

Larry Hogan, a former Republican governor of Maryland who is currently running for the Senate, offered a sharper rebuke.

“I think that’s insulting not only to the vice president, but to people that actually do have mental disabilities,” Hogan, who has often criticized Trump in the past, said on CBS News. “I’ve said for years that Trump’s divisive rhetoric is something we can do without.”

Steven Cheung, the communications director for the Trump campaign, did not directly address Trump’s insults or the critical responses they had prompted. He instead argued that Harris’ record on immigration and border security made her “wholly unfit to serve as president.”

In a statement, Cheung added that “her abhorrent dereliction of duty” at the border allowed criminals to “pour into our country to terrorize communities.”

Trump has long made personal attacks against Harris, even as some campaign advisers and Republican allies have urged him to stick to bread-and-butter policy issues that appeal to large swaths of voters. He has often demeaned her and questioned her racial identity, but at a rally in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, on Saturday, he escalated those attacks, with a series of insults questioning her mental fitness.

“Joe Biden became mentally impaired,” Trump said. “Kamala was born that way.”

Trump’s remarks – which he himself described as “dark” – came a day after Harris delivered one of her party’s toughest speeches in a generation on immigration and border security. Trump repeated some of the insults at a rally Sunday afternoon in Erie, Pennsylvania, saying “there’s something wrong with Kamala.”

Democrats also seized on his comments. Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois criticized Trump’s remarks as “name-calling” on CNN.

“Whenever he says things like that, he’s talking about himself but trying to project it onto others,” Pritzker said.

Eric Holder, the former attorney general who served in the Obama administration, went further, suggesting that Trump’s comments indicated “cognitive decline.”

“Trump made a great deal of the cognitive abilities of Joe Biden,” Holder said on MSNBC. “If this is where he is now, where is he going to be three and four years from now?”

After Trump’s remarks Saturday, the Harris campaign declined to comment on his personal attacks. A campaign spokesperson, Sarafina Chitika, said in a statement that Trump offered “darkness” to voters rather than inspiration.

Just hours after Trump made the remarks, “Saturday Night Live” was joking about them as it opened its 50th season. “I cannot believe that Trump admitted he lost the debate to a mentally disabled person,” Colin Jost said on the show’s “Weekend Update” segment.

The American Association of People with Disabilities, a nonpartisan advocacy group, criticized Trump’s comments as both inaccurate and harmful.

“Trump holds the ableist, false belief that if a person has a disability, they are less human and less worthy of dignity,” said Maria Town, the group’s president and CEO, in a statement. “Presidential history indicates that we’ve had many presidents who had disabilities.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.