Kamala Harris continued her broadsides against President Trump during a Thursday interview with CNN’s Kyung Lah, claiming that the president has both an unhealthy “preoccupation with size,” as well as an inability to empathize with anyone.
While on the California Democrat’s campaign bus in Sioux City, Iowa, Lah brought up that Trump made mention to El Paso hospital staff how large the crowds were at a rally he held in the city a few months ago.
Regarding whether this was appropriate and whether Trump should have visited the city at all, Harris scoffed and was seemingly at a loss for words. “His preoccupation with size, I’ll leave that for someone else to analyze,” she eventually said. “But I will say that this president has used the platform that is given to the office of president of the United States in a way that has been about trying to divide our country.”
Arguing that Trump speaks out of hate, Harris went on to accuse the president of lacking even the capacity for human empathy.
“He generally shows no evidence of any natural ability to have empathy,” Harris said. While acknowledging that it is generally appropriate for a president to visit cities that have been struck by tragedy, she implied that Trump does not truly care about the victims.
“I think that this president doesn’t really have the capacity to have empathy, and my heart goes out to not only the families, but also the leaders of those communities who are trying to pull it together and stand strong.”
Harris’ comments are the latest in a continuing stream of escalating rhetoric from 2020 presidential candidates, nearly all of whom have placed at least partial blame for the latest mass shootings on Trump. Since the shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Harris has taken to calling Trump “a racist.“
Trump’s alleged size obsession became an issue during the 2016 GOP primaries, when Trump and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio tussled over Trump’s hand size. Rubio implied on the stump that Trump’s small hands indicated the diminutive size of other appendages. “Look at those hands! Are those small hands?” Trump said during a March 2016 debate to raucous laughter. “And [Rubio] referred to my hands, if they’re small, something else must be small. I guarantee you, there’s no problem. I guarantee it.”
