Donald Trump leaned back in his golf cart, his son Barron at his side, drinking in the attention of his followers.
Handing two notes to someone off-camera from a roll he tucked back into his left pocket, he opined in that distinctive Queens accent, in a video obtained earlier this month by The Daily Beast, “That means we have Kamala.
“She’s so bad. She’s so pathetic,” Trump said. “She’s so fucking bad.”
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So bad that Trump has done more than to take two notes off a roll for her. In fact he donated a total of $6,000 to her campaign for California attorney general in 2011 and 2013.
The 2011 donation was for $5,000, when then-New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman hosted a fundraiser for the newly elected Harris. Her campaign initially accepted the money, even though Trump had begun spreading a racist lie that Barack Obama was born in Kenya.
This being Trump, the donation of course had purpose.
Schneiderman had launched an investigation into for-profit colleges when he took office at the start of 2011 and he had subpoenaed records for the already defunct Trump University that May. That was the same month that Schneiderman reportedly asked Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner to help him widen his social and political connections. The couple is said to have held a breakfast for him.
In September, Schneiderman invited the Trumps to the Harris fundraiser. Her office does not seem to have been investigating Trump University, but Donald Trump had an opportunity to curry favor with two attorneys general with one check. He followed that $5,000 with another $1,000 two years later. So did another Trump.
In 2014, Ivanka Trump kicked in $2,000 for Harris’ re-election campaign. Harris kept the $5,000 from Trump until 2015, when he was running for president and she was making a successful bid for the U.S. Senate. Her campaign announced that the money had been donated to a non-profit organization that advocates for human rights in Central America. She no doubt figured this was one of the last places he would want it to go.
In 2018, Schneiderman resigned amid allegations that he physically abused four women while in office, He could not be reached for comment about the Harris fundraiser and Trump donation in 2011.
Trump has of course donated to a host of other Democrats in the past whom he went on to vilify. They include Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and, yes, Joe Biden.
It raises intriguing questions about what happens when—perhaps more realistically, if—the two meet in debate. Harris has rattled a lot of men close to Trump during her time as a senator by playing prosecutor. Trump described her as “extraordinarily nasty” when Biden picked her.
The reason? “The ways she treated now Justice Kavanaugh.”
Vice President Kamala Harris and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (L) speak to the press while making a stop in Philadelphia.
Ryan Collerd/AFP via Getty ImagesThat memorable exchange between then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh and Harris at his confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court before the Senate Judiciary Committee was not pretty for Republicans. At one point she asked him about his views on abortion.
“Can you think of any laws that give government the power to make decisions about the male body?” she inquired.
Kavanaugh said he would be happy to answer if she was more specific. “Male versus female,” Harris said. “I’m not thinking of any right now, Senator,” Kavanaugh said.
“She was nasty to a level that was just a horrible thing,” Trump told the press. “And I won’t forget that soon.”
Judging from the golf cart video, not even Clinton bothers him more than Harris.
And with the prospect that she may be facing him as the Democratic candidate for president, she seems sure to give him a run for his money. This time there will be a lot more than $6,000 on the line.
