Harris says crude and racist rhetoric at Trump's event fans the fuel of division

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris said Monday that none of the vitriol at Donald Trump's Madison Square Garden rally will support the dreams and aspirations of the American people but instead is “fanning the fuel of trying to divide our country.”

She said Trump's event Sunday, in which speakers hurled cruel and racist insults, “highlighted the point that I've been making throughout this campaign.”

“He is focused and actually fixated on his grievances, on himself, and on dividing our country, and it is not in any way something that will strengthen the American family, the American worker,” the Democratic presidential nominee told reporters. She was traveling to Michigan on Monday to continue campaigning with eight days left before the Nov. 5 election.

She said she would point out that “there's a big difference between he and I” in the major campaign closing speech she plans to deliver Tuesday night on the Ellipse near the White House.

In 2021, Trump, the former president and current Republican nominee, rallied supporters during a speech at the Ellipse before telling them to go to the Capitol, where they rioted to try to overturn his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Harris also said, “What he did last night is not a discovery. It is just more of the same and may be more vivid than usual. Donald Trump spends full time trying to have Americans point their finger at each other, fans the fuel of hate and division, and that’s why people are exhausted with him.”

Trump's campaign has sought to distance itself from what was said at the event, including one speaker who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”