Racist and Dishonest Attacks

Spectator

By Stephen Tuttle | Aug. 17, 2024

The Trump/Vance team is having some difficulty settling on a plan of attack. What they’ve been trying so far does not seem to have gained much traction.

This is important for that campaign since they have little by way of actual policy to offer, and what they have offered is not very practical. They claim they will round-up and deport illegal immigrants starting with “at least a million” according to JD Vance. Of course, we remember Donald Trump already had four years to remove people he called murderers and rapists, but he didn’t. Nor did he balance the budget as promised, get tough with Chinese imports (Americans paid the tariffs), generate a lasting peace in the Middle East, or a blizzard of other promises he never kept.

So it’s important that he diminish the Harris/Walz campaign because he seems unable to lift his own.

They started with a Trump favorite, some attempted race baiting—we all remember his years of birther nonsense—by claiming Harris doesn’t know what race she is and that she has claimed differing ethnicities whenever it’s convenient for her. The thinly veiled subset of that ugliness is Vance claiming Harris and Walz are “uncomfortable in their own skin.”

Well, if you’re going to lie about someone, you might as well make it a big one and hope people believe you. They did not, and for good reason.

Kamala Harris, far from shying away from her ethnic background, has often spoken proudly about her heritage. Her father, Donald J. Harris, 85 and still alive, was born in Jamaica, studied at the University of London, and received his doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley. He ultimately became the first Black professor to be awarded tenure in the Stanford University Department of Economics, where he is still a professor emeritus.

Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, born and raised in India, came to the U.S. to enter a Master’s program at Cal Berkeley, where she also earned her doctorate. She was a biomedical research scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and furthered advances in breast biology and oncology. She died of colon cancer in 2009.

Kamala (which, by the way, is Sanskrit for lotus) Harris has spoken often and eloquently about the influence her Black father and Indian mother both had on her. So that race card didn’t work at all.

Not willing to give up quite so easily, Trump/Vance next tried the “stolen valor” attack.

Minnesota governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, when supporting the regulation of assault weapons, said, “...those weapons of war, that I carried in war…”

Walz, though a 24-year veteran of the Army National Guard, was never in a war zone, so that statement was untrue. Vance, a four-year veteran of the Marine Corps who was deployed to Iraq for six months in 2005 as a military journalist, further claimed that Walz resigned from the Guard after learning they would be deployed, so he “turned his back” on his battalion. Walz has acknowledged he misspoke regarding carrying a weapon “in war.” The second accusation, that he abandoned and betrayed his battalion, is just an ugly lie.

Walz retired in May of 2005, having submitted the paperwork earlier as required. His battalion was notified about upcoming deployment in July of 2005, two months after his retirement was final. His battalion was finally deployed in March of 2006, 10 months after Walz retired. By the accounts of other Guard members, Walz was a dedicated and honorable member of his battalion, retiring as a master sergeant.

If military service, or lack thereof, is going to become a campaign issue, then let’s talk about Donald Trump’s magical bone spurs. In 1968, he was given a 1-Y conditional medical deferment classification which became a 4-F permanent medical deferment in 1972 because of bone spurs in his heels.

The diagnosis was provided by a podiatrist who, conveniently, leased office space in a building owned by Trump’s father. There is no evidence Donald Trump regularly, or ever, was treated by the foot specialist, Dr. Larry Braunstein, who died in 2007.

There is no evidence Trump’s bone spurs ever impeded his social life, tennis, or golf activities before or after the diagnosis. Nor is there any evidence Trump was ever treated in any way for his bone spurs, though they could not go away without some form of treatment that can range from non-invasive diet and exercise all the way to surgery.

Tim Walz, who hopes to be vice president, committed a two-word exaggeration that made his 24 years of service seem more than it was. Donald Trump, who hopes to be president, didn’t serve at all because he had magically appearing and disappearing bone spurs.

If the election depends on racist and dishonest Trump/Vance attack points, Kamala Harris will be the next president.