Kamala Harris accused Donald Trump on Monday of becoming “increasingly unstable and unhinged,” days after an armed man was arrested outside the former president’s Coachella rally in what the local sheriff claimed was a third assassination attempt.
“Donald Trump is increasingly unstable and unhinged,” the vice president told supporters at an Erie, Pa., rally.
“He is out for unchecked power,” Harris continued. “That’s what he’s looking for. He wants to send the military after American citizens.”
The 59-year-old Democratic nominee’s new line of attack against Trump – the subject of at least two assassination attempts in recent months – comes after the former president previously blamed the rhetoric of Harris and President Biden for an attempt on his life in Palm Beach, Fla., last month.
“Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at,” Trump, 78, told Fox News in September.
“He believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it,” the GOP nominee said of Ryan Routh, who is accused of setting up a sniper’s nest outside Trump’s Palm Beach golf course last month in an effort to gun down the former president.
A California sheriff believes his deputies thwarted a third assassination attempt against Trump on Saturday when they arrested an armed man at a checkpoint outside Trump’s rally in Coachella Valley.
“I truly do believe we prevented another assassination attempt,” Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco told reporters Sunday, a day after Vem Miller, 49, was taken into custody.
Miller was attempting to enter the rally site with a fake press pass, a shotgun, a loaded handgun, a high-capacity magazine and several fraudulent passports and driver’s licenses, according to local authorities.
The FBI and Secret Service are investigating the incident but are not calling it an assassination attempt.
Miller, who claims to be a Trump supporter and denies he was planning to carry out an attack, was hit with a weapons charge and released on bail.
Back in Erie – a bellwether swing county with a history of predicting the winner in Pennsylvania elections – Harris appeared to steal another page from Trump’s playbook when she played a montage of soundbites from the former president during the rally.
Trump regularly plays clips of his Democratic opponent’s flip-flops and word salads for rally-goers, but this appears to be the first time Harris has used the tactic.
The 45th president has previously accused Harris of lifting parts of his campaign and policy strategy, including his no tax on tips proposal and pledge to keep US Steel under domestic ownership.
The clips played by Harris highlighted several instances of Trump warning about “the enemies from within” the country at different rallies and in media interviews.
“He’s talking about the enemy within Pennsylvania,” the vice president charged.
Trump first deployed the “enemy from within” line during a Sept. 16 interview with Fox News, the same one where he blasted the rhetoric coming from Harris and Biden in the wake of the second assassination attempt.
