AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Donald Trump tried Friday to turn a major celebratory event for Kamala Harris into an attack line tied to his favorite subject, immigration.
Hours before Harris was scheduled to appear with superstar Beyoncé in Houston, Trump made his own stop in Texas and accused Harris of hanging out with "woke celebrities" but not with the families of people who have been killed by migrants.
With 11 days until the election, Trump and Harris both took a detour from their travels in battleground states for brief forays into solidly Republican Texas. Neither believes the state is competitive, but they're using it as a backdrop to drive a message about the issues they hope voters will have front of mind when they cast ballots. For Trump, that's border security. For Harris, it's abortion rights.
Trump's trip to Texas, his second stop in a border state in two days, comes as the former president escalates his already dark and apocalyptic rhetoric against illegal immigration.
"We're like a garbage can for the rest of the world to dump the people that they don't want," Trump told supporters Friday in Austin. Trump has continued to push the unfounded idea that foreign governments actively send criminals to the U.S.
Harris said the remark is "just another example of how he really belittles our country."
"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, not someone like Donald Trump, who is constantly demeaning and belittling who the American people are," Harris told reporters in Houston.
Throughout the campaign, Trump has routinely appeared with grieving relatives of people who were hurt or killed by people living in the country illegally. On Friday, he ceded the microphone to the mother of a 12-year-old Texas girl, Jocelyn Nungaray, whose body was found in June. Prosecutors have charged two Venezuelan men in the U.S. illegally with capital murder.
"She was just being a child, and due to the Biden-Harris policies we have here ... she's not here anymore," Alexis Nungaray said.
During a rally Thursday in Arizona, Trump railed against Harris for the Biden administration's record on the border, which he said had "unleashed" an "army of migrant gangs" that are "waging a campaign of violence and terror against our citizens."
At an event in Las Vegas later in the day, Trump claimed towns had been "invaded and conquered" by violent immigrants, adding: "We have a lot of towns that haven't yet been infected." Trump has long echoed tropes about immigration in portraying migrants as disease carriers, dating back to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump views immigration as the issue that won him the White House in 2016. He accuses Harris of perpetrating "a wicked betrayal of America" and having "orchestrated the most egregious betrayal that any leader in American history has ever inflicted upon our people," even though crime is down.
While migrants have been charged with some high-profile crimes that Trump repeatedly highlights, research has shown that immigrants — including those who entered the country illegally — are charged with fewer violent crimes than American citizens.
He has also spread false theories that Democrats are registering immigrants without legal status to vote.
While in Austin, Trump also will sit down with Joe Rogan, the nation's most listened-to podcaster, creating another opportunity for the Republican nominee to highlight the hypermasculine tone that has defined much of his 2024 White House bid. The interview is expected to be released Saturday.
Rogan interview underscores Trump's focus on masculinity
Trump has made masculinity a central theme of his campaign, appearing on podcasts targeting young male voters and tapping surrogates who sometimes use crude language.
At a Trump rally Wednesday, former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson called the Democratic vice presidential nominee, Tim Walz, a "weak man" and compared Trump's return to the White House to a dad who comes home ready to punish his misbehaved children.
"When Dad gets home, you know what he says?" Carlson asked. "You've been a bad girl. You've been a bad little girl, and you are getting a vigorous spanking right now."
Rogan and Trump have a complicated relationship. Rogan had previously said that he declined to host Trump on his podcast before because he did not want to help him.
Earlier this year, Trump criticized Rogan after the podcaster said that then-candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. was the only person running for president who made sense to him. Kennedy has since suspended his bid, endorsed Trump and joined him on the campaign trail.
"It will be interesting to see how loudly Joe Rogan gets BOOED the next time he enters the UFC Ring???" Trump wrote on his social media site in August, referring to Rogan's experience as a commentator for the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
The podcaster is known for his hourslong interviews on "The Joe Rogan Experience," which is listed as No. 1 in the United States, according to Spotify's charts. He calls women "chicks" and once laughed as a comedian friend described repeatedly coercing young women comics into sex.