Trump delivers pointed speech at Catholic charity dinner

The Republican presidential nominee didn’t hold back as he tore into his rival Kamala Harris in an at times aggressive speech at a charity dinner in New York.

Donald and Melania Trump at the 79th annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York. Picture: AP

Donald Trump laced into Kamala Harris and other Democrats on Thursday night in a pointed and at times bitter speech as he headlined the annual Al Smith charity dinner in New York.

The former president, in remarks that often felt more like a rally speech than a comedy skit, repeatedly criticised the Vice-President over her decision to skip the event, breaking with presidential tradition as she campaigned in Wisconsin. She recorded a video that was played onscreen instead.

“You should have told her the funds were going to bail out the looters and rioters in Minneapolis and then she’d be here,” the Republican nominee quipped, urging Catholics to vote for him in response. “You gotta remember that I’m here and she’s not.”

The white-tie dinner raises millions of dollars for Catholic charities and has traditionally ­offered candidates from both ­parties the chance to trade lighthearted barbs, poke fun at themselves, and show that they can get along – or at least pretend to – for one night in the election’s final stretch. It’s often the last time the two nominees share a stage before election day.

Mr Trump delivered a number of one-liners that drew hearty laughs. But he also questioned the mental fitness of Ms Harris and President Joe Biden, commented on second gentleman Doug Emhoff’s extramarital affair during his previous marriage, and made a joke about transgender women that echoed his mocking of trans athletes on the campaign trail.

He said at one point that he would offer a couple of self-deprecating jokes before abandoning the effort. “Nope. I’ve got nothing,” he said to laughs. “I just don’t see the point of taking shots at myself when other people have been shooting at me,” he added, referencing his survival of two ­assassination attempts this year.

Of Mr Biden, he said: “If the Democrats really wanted to have someone not be with us this evening, they would have sent Joe Biden.”

Later, he said the current occupant of the White House “can barely talk, barely put together two coherent sentences, who seems to have the mental faculties of a child. This is a person that has nothing going, no intelligence whatsoever. But enough about Kamala Harris.”

In the video she recorded for the occasion, Harris appeared alongside Molly Shannon, who reprised her long-running Saturday Night Live character Mary Katherine Gallagher, an awkward Catholic schoolgirl. She also poked fun at Mr Trump for comments he made in Michigan, saying that mocking Catholics in the video would be “like criticising Detroit in Detroit”.

The dais included a mix of Trump allies and foes, with various entanglements. They included New York Attorney-General Letitia James, who brought a successful civil fraud case against Mr Trump and his business. Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who endorsed Mr Trump after dropping his own bid for the presidential nomination, attended with his wife, Cheryl Hines.

AP