Trump Deploys Anti-Disability Rhetoric Once Again
The squatter who used to occupy the White House went and did it again. He insulted disabled people.
In case you’re trying to keep score, here’s the latest, as of now. (But he may well say a new offensive line about disabled people at any moment.)
At one of his recent campaign rallies in Wisconsin, Donald Trump said Vice President Kamala Harris is “mentally impaired” and “mentally disabled.”
The next day, at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, the former President said, “Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way … If you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country.” What he was trying to do there, as he does whenever he gets the chance, was to stir up paranoia. Appealing to fear and resentment is the foundation on which his campaign strategy is built.
In response to Trump’s tired old idiocy, the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) released a statement, in which AAPD President and CEO Maria Town said, “Trump holds the ableist, false belief that if a person has a disability, they are less human and less worthy of dignity.”
“To be clear,” Town continued, “the insult of Donald Trump’s comment is not the suggestion that Vice President Harris is disabled, but rather, the insinuation that having a disability is synonymous with poor performance as a prospective President.”
Earlier this year, Trump mocked President Joe Biden’s stutter during one of his rallies. Consequently, an organization called ADA Watch circulated a petition imploring the former squatter “to apologize to the more than three million Americans who stutter, and to cease mocking people with disabilities.”
None of this behavior is new. For many years now, Trump has tried to put people down, including Biden, by saying they have low IQs. And who can forget how, during his first presidential campaign, Trump mocked a disabled reporter by doing an over-the-top spaz impression?
This is just a partial list of the insulting things Trump has said and done that illustrate just how deeply he believes that disabilities are synonymous with uselessness and incompetence. He is depicting us as he truly sees us.
Trump himself has also been a victim of the spread of this kind of foolishness. Back when he occupied the White House, a video circulated far and wide that showed him having trouble maintaining his balance while he was walking down a ramp. This video was frequently cited as yet another example of his bungling incompetence.
One would think that the pain of being so unfairly judged like that would have made Trump feel at least a little empathy for those of us he uses as an easy punchline. But apparently empathy isn’t powerful enough to penetrate his barnacled skull.