NEW YORK – Former President Donald Trump laced into Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats on Thursday in a pointed and at times bitter speech as he headlined the annual Al Smith charity dinner in New York.
Trump, in remarks that often felt more like a rally performance than a comedy routine, repeatedly criticized Harris over her decision to skip the event in a break from presidential tradition as she campaigned in Wisconsin.
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She recorded a video that was played onscreen, but Trump called the decision "deeply disrespectful."
““If you really wanted Vice President Harris to accept your invitation, I guess you should have told her the funds were going to bail out the looters and rioters in Minneapolis and she would have been here, guaranteed,” said Trump, urging Catholics to vote for him in response.
“You better remember that I’m here and she’s not," he said.
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.
Trump delivered a number of one-liners that drew laughs. But he also questioned the mental fitness of 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 frequent 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 said, referencing his survival of two assassination attempts this year.
Of 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 comedian and actress Molly Shannon, who reprised her long-running “Saturday Night Live” character Mary Katherine Gallagher, an awkward Catholic schoolgirl. She also poked fun at Trump for comments he made in Michigan, saying that mocking Catholics in the video would be “like criticizing Detroit in Detroit.”
Harris’ campaign had previously said that, with less than three weeks before Election Day, they wanted her to spend as much time as possible campaigning in battleground states that will decide the election, rather than detouring to heavily Democratic New York. Her team has told organizers that she would be willing to attend the dinner as president if she wins.
Melania Trump attended in a rare appearance
Trump was joined at the dinner by his wife, Melania, who has been an infrequent presence on the campaign trail.
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 Trump and his business. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who endorsed Trump after dropping his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, attended with his wife, Cheryl Hines.
Also in attendance were New York’s embattled Mayor Eric Adams and other top city officials, as well as business leaders and sports and media personalities. Adams was charged last month with accepting illegal campaign contributions and lavish overseas trips from Turkish officials and businesspeople — a case that was mentioned repeatedly, including by Trump.
Trump has claimed, without evidence, that Adams was targeted by authorities because he criticized Biden’s migrant policies.
“Mayor Adams: Good luck with everything,” Trump said, adding that what Adams faces is “peanuts” compared to his own legal woes and predicting that he will win reelection nonetheless.
He also went after former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who was repeatedly booed by the crowd.
“To be honest, he was a terrible mayor," Trump said before offering a profanity at a religion-themed event. "I don’t give a s—- if this is comedy or not.”
Jim Gaffigan, who plays Tim Walz on ‘SNL,’ emceed
The dinner was emceed by comedian Jim Gaffigan, who plays Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz on “Saturday Night Live.”
Gaffigan has a history of criticizing Trump. In 2020, he wrote on X, then named Twitter, that, “We need to wake up. We need to call trump the con man and thief that he is.”
Gaffigan largely kept his focus on others Thursday, but offered several pointed quips, including when he referenced allegations that the Trump Organization in the 1970s discriminated against Black renters.
“If Vice President Harris wins this election, not only would she be the first female president, a Black woman would occupy the White House, a former Trump residence,” Gaffigan said. “Obviously you wouldn't be renting to her. I mean, that would never happen anyway. Maybe if Doug did the signing.”
Gaffigan also mocked Harris for not coming to the dinner and joked about the Democrats replacing Biden with the vice president.
“The media has begun discussing the phenomena of secret Trump voters. I don’t know if you’ve heard about this — people who publicly say they would never vote for Trump, but then when they go in the voting booth, they do. It’s a small group. They’re called the Biden family,” he told the crowd.
Reprising his role
Trump's tone echoed his appearance in 2016, when he was joined by his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, and delivered a particularly nasty speech in which he called her “corrupt."
“Hillary believes that it’s vital to deceive the people by having one public policy and a totally different policy in private,” he said to jeers. “For example, here she is tonight, in public, pretending not to hate Catholics.”
Mary Callahan Erdoes, vice chair of the foundation, alluded to that when she introduced Trump, suggesting she hoped for something less caustic.
“You never disappoint. Your wit is absolutely fabulous. And all of us together are going to hope for the best,” she said to laughs.
Trump, too, referenced the performance Thursday, saying that, in 2016, he "went overboard. That was like terrible. And I knew I was in trouble midway through."
That didn't stop him, however, from similar attacks, and repeatedly straying off-script.
The Harris campaign responded to Trump's speech with a statement saying it would remind “Americans how unstable he’s become.”
“He may refuse to release his medical records, but every day he makes it clear to the American people that he is not up to the job,” said spokesperson Ammar Moussa.
Trump's sense of humor is often cited by his supporters as key to his appeal. While he infamously glowered through former President Barack Obama’s jokes at his expense during the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner, he also sometimes pokes fun at himself.
At several rallies this year, he has remarked on his hair after catching a glimpse of himself onscreen.
“What the hell can you do? There’s nothing I can do about it. We’re stuck with it," he joked at a rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania, last month.
Both Trump and Biden, who is Catholic, spoke at a virtual version of the fundraiser in 2020, which was moved online due to concerns over large gatherings at the height of the pandemic.
The Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner is named for the former New York governor, a Democrat who was the first Catholic to receive a major-party nomination for president when he unsuccessfully ran for the White House in 1928.
The event has become a tradition for presidential candidates since Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy appeared together in 1960. In 1996, the Archdiocese of New York decided not to invite then-President Bill Clinton and his Republican challenger, Bob Dole, reportedly because Clinton vetoed a late-term abortion ban.