Trump, honing attacks on Harris, casts her as a far-left threat

West Palm Beach: Former President Donald Trump sharpened his attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday, accusing her of wanting to impose left-wing values on the nation, painting her as overly liberal on immigration and abortion and calling her a “bum” in a speech to a gathering of religious conservatives.

Speaking at the Believers Summit, a faith-focused conference hosted by the conservative advocacy group Turning Point Action in West Palm Beach, Florida, Trump invoked the specter of San Francisco — a liberal city long used as shorthand by conservatives eager to denigrate Democrats — as he argued that Harris would, if elected, impose far-left values on the country.

“Kamala Harris will appoint hundreds of extreme far left judges to forcibly impose crazy San Francisco liberal values on Americans nationwide,” Trump told the crowd.

Making his second campaign speech since Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee this week, Trump’s barbs seemed more focused than earlier in the week, when he unleashed a flurry of wide-ranging attacks.

Friday’s speech capped off a remarkably tumultuous week in modern political history, and it reflected how Trump and his campaign have been trying to recalibrate their message after President Joe Biden’s decision Sunday to end his reelection bid.

Biden’s move upended a presidential race that Trump and his team had been anticipating for years. He and his campaign spent considerable time developing sharp attacks on Biden, and at a rally in North Carolina on Wednesday, much of his speech simply shifted those criticisms to Harris.

But Trump seemed to make a more considered effort Friday to define Harris as further to Biden’s left.

As he spoke to a largely Christian audience, Trump insisted that Harris would “appoint hard-core Marxists” to an expanded Supreme Court in order “to shred our Constitution and all of our religious liberty.”

And he took particular aim at her position on abortion rights, an area that has proved politically difficult for Republicans since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Trump, who has taken credit for appointing the three justices who cleared the way for that ruling, insisted Friday that Harris wanted a federal law “for abortion to rip the baby out of the woman in the eighth, ninth month and even after birth,” a brazen falsehood.

No state law permits the killing of babies after birth. While Harris has not called for specific limits on abortion, she supports legislation that would protect the right to abortion nationally and restore the status of abortion under Roe v. Wade.

This year, Trump said he backed states’ rights to set their own restrictions on abortion, a position that drew criticism from some anti-abortion activists. On Friday, he reiterated his desire for exceptions that allow for abortions in cases of rape, incest and where the life of the mother is at stake — a statement that drew a smattering of boos from the religious crowd.

“You have to go with your heart,” Trump said in response. “But you also have to win elections.”

His speech came hours after he had met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Palm Beach, Florida, and he referred to the meeting as he tried to portray Harris as “hostile to Americans of faith.”

Trump accused Harris of betraying Israel by failing to condemn “anti-Israel” protests in the wake of the deadly Hamas attacks in October 2023. As he again proclaimed his allegiance to Israel and his support for its military assault in the Gaza Strip, Trump said that Harris, whose husband is Jewish, “doesn’t like Jewish people” or “Israel.”

Trump again attacked Harris for failing to address the surge of crossings at the border early in Biden’s term, when Biden deputized her to oversee efforts to address the underlying issues causing migrants to make the journey.

He broadly characterized immigrants as “murderers, child predators and bloodthirsty rapists and drug dealers” and insisted without evidence that Harris and Democrats were encouraging immigrants to cross the border illegally to turn them into voters.

Trump also repeated his false, widely debunked claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, which he has maintained that he won.

James Singer, a Harris campaign spokesperson, criticized Trump in a statement for insulting Jewish Americans and lying about the 2020 election. Trump, he said, “went on and on and on, and generally sounded like someone you wouldn’t want to sit near at a restaurant — let alone be president of the United States.”

Trump’s speech Friday came as his campaign began an initiative to increase turnout among Christian voters.

That program, known as Believers and Ballots, is a grassroots organizing effort that aims to recruit people to “organize prayer calls” and use their personal connections to encourage friends, neighbors and fellow churchgoers to vote for Trump in November.