Vice President Kamala Harris condemned Donald Trump’s suggestion that the United States had become a “garbage can for the world,” saying the former president has a responsibility to do better.
“It’s just another example of how he really belittles our country,” Harris said in a press conference on Friday. “This is someone who is a former president of the United States, who has a bully pulpit. And this is how he uses it? To tell the rest of the world that somehow the United States of America is trash?”
Trump's garbage comments are of a piece with his recent anti-immigrant rhetoric. In addition to claims on Thursday that the United States had become a "dumping ground," he's floated the idea that immigrants have “bad genes” and are “poisoning the blood of our countryd of our country.” These public statements, as well as what they heard from Trump in private, have led several former Trump advisers to liken him to a fascist.
Trump previously called the United States a “nation in decline” at the Republican National Convention. Harris has taken a more optimistic tone in her campaign.
“The President of the United States should be someone who elevates discourse and talks about the best of who we are – and invests in the best of who we are,” Harris said. “Not somebody like Donald Trump who is constantly demeaning and belittling who the American people are. America deserves better.”
Trump doubled down on the claim that immigrants had reduced the country to “garbage” during a Friday rally in Texas, adding that the remark “just came out” before repeating it.
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