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On Saturday, the day after Vice President Kamala Harris’ first visit to the U.S.-Mexico border as a presidential candidate, her Republican rival, former President Donald Trump, used a new insult against her at a campaign event in Wisconsin, describing Harris as “mentally impaired” and “mentally disabled.”

By Sunday, despite objections from disability rights groups and against advice from members of his own party, Trump had incorporated the snub into his stump speech. 

“Joe Biden became mentally impaired,” he said of the president in meandering remarks that lasted nearly two hours before a crowd in Pennsylvania. 

“But lyin’ 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’s something missing and you know what? Everybody knows it,” he continued, tying it to the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the border and the economy.

Since Biden dropped out of the presidential race in July and Democrats nominated Harris in his stead, Trump has targeted his competitor by mocking her laugh, sharing vulgar sexual jokes about her and questioning her racial identity. Many of Trump’s personal broadsides against Harris are an attempt to frame her as weak and himself as strong — and these are opposing qualities Trump sees as gendered. 

At the Republican National Convention, Trump appeared on the same stage as Hulk Hogan, a retired professional wrestler, and Dana White, the president of Ultimate Fighting Championship. Trump has also praised political strongmen such as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Hungarian President Viktor Orban, who both embrace authoritarian styles of leadership. 

Trump adviser Jason Miller told reporters on Monday, a day before the vice presidential debate, that he expects Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, to deliver a solid performance against Trump’s JD Vance, a U.S. senator for Ohio, in part because Walz wouldn’t be “effeminate” and “wildly gesticulating.”

Trump’s latest round of insults, though intensifying in their rhetoric, follow a long history of using mental weakness and disability as a slur. For years, he has accused opponents of being “low IQ;” just last month, he said Harris was “dumb” and lacking “mental capacity.” 

During his first White House campaign, in 2015, Trump was criticized for mimicking a New York Times reporter with a congenital joint condition during a rally, though Trump repeatedly denied doing so afterward. When a veteran who acquired brain damage and lost a leg over the course of five combat tours sang “God Bless America” at an event, Trump asked former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that,” according to reporting by The Atlantic. In his book, published in July, Trump’s nephew, Fred Trump III, who has a son with significant intellectual and developmental disabilities, wrote that after meeting with a group of disability advocates, the former president said, “The shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.” 

Katy Neas, chief executive of The Arc of the United States, an organization that advocates for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, told The 19th: “What we all want is for people to be treated with dignity and respect. It’s my perspective that Trump’s comments using the term ‘mentally disabled’ were not to convey dignity and respect. They were meant to diminish.”

Neas added that Arc members hold a “range of opinions” and that some of them support the former president and his policies. 

Trump’s comments felt personal to Barbara Coppens, 66, of Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Coppens has an intellectual disability and was institutionalized as a child. She now lives in her own apartment and works for Disability Rights New Jersey, training other people with intellectual and developmental disabilities about their voting rights. 

“He shouldn’t be calling anybody that. I don’t think it’s right,” she told The 19th. 

Coppens plans on voting in the upcoming election, as do many of her friends with intellectual and developmental disabilities. “Voting is important because people like us have the right to get out there and vote for who we want. We’re people like everyone else,” Coppens said. 

Tracking polls show Harris and Trump neck-and-neck in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, two battleground states that are critical to both candidates’ chances of becoming president. Trump’s attack on Harris and her intellect came after she presented her plan to combat the influx of fentanyl from Mexico while she campaigned in Arizona, where she also delivered what is arguably the Democrats’ strongest stance on border security in recent times. Arizona is also in play in the presidential race. 

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Trump’s campaign revolves largely around his perceived strengths with voters on the economy and immigration. However, as polls show his advantage on the economy slipping, the former president has doubled down on immigration, often relying on inflammatory, anti-immigrant rhetoric to fire up his base, even if it has meant amplifying lies. An analysis done earlier this month by The Washington Post estimated that Trump now “averages a six-percentage-point edge on the economy, compared with a 12-point lead against President Joe Biden earlier this year.” 

More voters in nearly every demographic group pick some variation of the economy as their top issue, even if some polls now show that for younger women, abortion has overtaken the economy. Immigration is often the second most-cited issue, though one that is most motivating for Republican voters. It is unclear whether Trump’s decision to focus on immigration in the way that he has — and escalate the insults he lobs at Harris — will resonate with undecided voters, the type of voters he needs to win over and who aren’t already in his corner. 

On Sunday, former Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, who is currently a U.S. ambassador to Turkey, endorsed Harris after she campaigned in his border state. Flake was part of a bipartisan group of senators whose attempt to overhaul the immigration system ultimately failed due to partisan gridlock. He also endorsed Biden over Trump in 2000. 

When ABC News’ Martha Raddatz on Sunday asked Rep. Tom Emmer, who is helping Vance with debate prep, whether he approved of the language Trump used over the weekend to attack Harris, the Minnesota Republican said he thought the former president should “stick on the issues” like border security.

“The issues are: Donald Trump fixed it once. They broke it. He’s going to fix it again,” Emmer said. “That — those are the issues.” 

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