Trump calls Harris ‘mentally disabled’ in Wisconsin speech focused on immigration

GOP presidential contender focuses on the border in visit Prairie du Chien

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event, Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024, in Prairie du Chien, Wis. AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall

Donald Trump took personal jabs at his his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris in a visit to southwestern Wisconsin Saturday, calling her “mentally disabled” in a speech that focused on immigration.

The Republican former president addressed a crowd inside a high school auditorium in Prairie du Chien, a riverside city of fewer than 6,000 people near Wisconsin’s border with Iowa.

Trump accused the Biden-Harris administration of enabling illegal immigration, and he tied the issue to crime, using often-graphic anecdotes.

The backdrop of his speech at the Prairie du Chien Area Arts Center included posters of mugshots with names of people who had purportedly immigrated to the United States illegally, and who have been accused of crimes, including one poster which misspelled the word “homicide.”

Trump and other Republicans have labeled Harris as Joe Biden’s border czar, after the Democratic president tasked her with addressing the root causes of migration.

Trump doubled-down on that label Saturday. He said he wasn’t impressed by Harris’ appearance the southern border on Saturday. The trip was Harris’ first visit to the border since 2021.

“I watched this show that she put on,” Trump said. “(After) four years of the most incompetent border anywhere in the world, in history, Kamala Harris traveled to the scene.”

He later drew laughs and cheers from the crowd when he said, “Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way.”

“If you think about it,” he added, “only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country.”

Harris has promised to take measures to secure the border, such as increasing funding for border patrol agents and for improved technologies to detect fentanyl. She’s also pledged to create an earned pathway to citizenship for legal immigrants.

And her campaign has accused Trump of pressuring Congress to kill a major immigration bill.

“He sank the bipartisan border deal because he’s more interested in fanning the flames of hate and division than delivering real solutions for our country,” Harris-Walz spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in a statement Saturday.

Trump campaigns in district with closely-watched congressional race

Trump called Prairie du Chien a “beautiful town,” while joking about how difficult the French-influenced name is to pronounce.

He also referenced the recent arrest there of a Venezuelan national who police believe to have entered the country illegally.

Prairie du Chien Police apprehended Alejandro Jose Coronel Zarate earlier this month on multiple charges after Crawford County police say he sexually assaulted a woman he had been dating and living with. He’s also accused of strangling that woman while in Prairie du Chien, and physically assaulting her daughter when the girl tried to intervene to stop her mother from being choked, according to a criminal complaint filed in Crawford County.

At the time of Coronel Zarate’s arrest in Prairie du Chien, he had a warrant out for his arrest in Dane County on charges including strangulation and false imprisonment stemming from an incident in Madison.

Prairie du Chien’s police chief said previously that Coronel Zarate appears to have ties to a transnational gang from Venezuela known as Tren de Aragua.

But, in remarks delivered onstage ahead of Trump’s speech, the chief clarified the issue does not appear to be widespread in the city.

“The suspect from the Sept. 5 incident is the only gang member from Venezuela that my staff has come in contact with preceding this incident, and the only Venezuelan gang member we have had contact with since this incident,” Chief Kyle Teynor said. “Violence knows no nationality. It knows no immigration status. It knows no race and it knows no political affiliation. Violence in any form must never become normal in a civilized society.”

Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden introduced Trump and the other speakers. Van Orden faces Democrat Rebecca Cooke in a tight Nov. 5 race for the 3rd Congressional District, which includes Prairie du Chien.

Prairie du Chien is the county seat of Crawford County, which leans somewhat Republican, with about 53 percent of the county’s vote going to Trump four years ago.

Trump plans to return to Wisconsin early next week, with campaign stops set for Tuesday in Waunakee and Milwaukee.