At Trump’s events, vulgar T-shirts disparaging Harris are in demand

Craig Dumas didn’t hesitate when asked which one of his T-shirts sells best at Donald Trump’s rallies. It’s the one that calls the first female vice president a “hoe.”

“They love it,” said Dumas, 47, who in Tucson sold shirts insulting Harris with a misspelling of a derogatory term for a sexually promiscuous woman. “I can’t keep up with the count.”

Business was similarly brisk 2,400 miles away in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where vendors hawked $25 versions of the shirts (“Say No to the Hoe”) down a line of attendees who smiled and snapped photos. Sold: to two parents who gave the shirt to their 13-year-old daughter. Sold: to a woman who wouldn’t wear it herself but knew her in-law would like it. Sold: to the Mikhailovs, who let their 14-year-old put it on and laughed as she talked about its meaning.

“I understand it’s derogatory,” said Brian Howard, 47, who wore a “Joe and the Hoe Gotta Go” T-shirt to a Trump rally in Montana. “We can joke. We can wear crude shirts. Everybody here is having a good time.”

The merchants and their customers have become a polarizing staple of Trump’s campaign events this election season, promoting shirts with different slogans and spellings of the same vulgar attack. While not the majority of Trump rallygoers, their persistent presence speaks to how much the candidate’s fans have echoed his demeaning attacks on Harris in even more offensive terms. Many supporters say they revel in his unfiltered rhetoric and see it as a core part of his appeal, effectively creating a safe harbor at his events for vicious insults.

Trump hasn’t ever publicly used the term “ho” to describe Harris, but he has used his social media account to promote a vulgar joke about her performing a sex act and suggested she would be “like a play toy” for world leaders if she becomes president. He has also disparaged her in increasingly personal and profane terms, calling her “dumb” and “stupid.”

[Trump’s Madison Square Garden event features crude and racist insults]

Some Trump backers say they find the shirts distasteful and unhelpful to expanding Trump’s appeal. Polls show he is trailing among women in a close-fought race against Harris. Kathy Talarico, an independent voter standing in line for the rally in Wilkes-Barre, just wrinkled her nose when asked about the “ho” shirts. “It’s disparaging,” she said.

“I think it’s tacky,” said Lori Levi, a vendor who sells the “ho” shirts. “But that’s what my customers want to buy, so that’s what I have.”

Politicians in both parties have long sought to tamp down incendiary attacks from their backers, but Trump has typically been reluctant to reprimand people who support him. Asked if the Trump campaign objects to supporters’ gendered criticisms of Harris, including the use of “ho,” campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt deflected and suggested the Harris campaign was condoning “violence-inciting rhetoric” against Trump by calling him a threat to democracy. She said gender has “nothing to do” with Harris’s unpopularity.

Barbara Comstock, a former Republican congresswoman from Virginia, said the insults at Trump’s events are a reminder that “the fish rots from the head down.”

“The permission structure from the very top, from Trump” and his campaign, she said, “allows that kind of thing.” Comstock, a longtime Trump critic, said she recently received a threatening voicemail that included a harsher version of “ho” while responding to her criticism of Trump on TV.

The Harris campaign declined to comment.

Sexual jabs at Harris pop up routinely on the campaign trail, even following her to a memorial for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, where a man wore a T-shirt that alluded to Harris performing a sex act. Outside Harris and Trump’s debate in Philadelphia, a Trump supporter resurrected a sign he said he used eight years ago when Trump ran against Hillary Clinton: “TRUMP VS TRAMP.”

Clinton also inspired gender-specific attacks in 2016: T-shirts calling her “b----” were a common sight at Trump rallies. After Harris became Biden’s running mate in 2020, a small stock of anti-Harris merchandise outside rallies often had a sexual connotation.

Now the gendered insults are more visible than ever. Vendors regularly sing and shout as they roam the long lines at Trump’s events: “Say no to the ho!”

Even Trump supporters who say they want a more respectful political discourse sometimes send mixed signals, criticizing crass insults at one moment and embracing them at another.

John Vega, 59, worried at the Montana rally that insults like “ho” are counterproductive. “It doesn’t give the movement credit,” he said. But when asked to explain his support for Trump, Vega fondly brought up a moment from a 2015 presidential debate in which then-Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly recited Trump’s insults toward women.

“You’ve called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals …”

Trump interrupted to say, “Only Rosie O’Donnell.” The crowd cheered.

“He felt free to just speak his mind,” Vega said appreciatively.

In Wilkes-Barre, 64-year-old Stosh Vicki said he doesn’t like “the personal attacks and the insults, by either party.” Yet Vicki almost bought a “Say no to the hoe” shirt as he waited in line but said he couldn’t find the right size.

Trump supporters often explain their use of “ho” by pointing to a relationship Harris had in the 1990s with former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown. Some rallygoers claim it was secretive affair; in fact, the couple dated openly after Brown had separated from his wife. The relationship ended before Harris ran for her first elective office.

As one man in line began to explain his distaste for Harris at a rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota, 35-year-old Jose Chapa Jr. turned around and jumped in to say, falsely, that Brown paid Harris to work as an “escort” and was “caught in a scandal.”

Brown addressed the relationship in a 2019 opinion piece published in the San Francisco Chronicle. He acknowledged that he may have aided Harris’s early career by appointing her to two state commissions, said he helped many other California politicians and declared: “So what?”

Trump himself has touched on Harris’s past relationship with Brown. “She had a very good friend named Willie Brown,” he said at an Atlanta rally in August. Many in the crowd got the reference, laughing and cheering Trump on. “He knows more about her than anybody’s ever known … could tell you stories that you’re not going to want to hear,” Trump said.

As Trump bashed Harris at a recent rally in her home state of California, some audience members chimed in with periodic shouts of “She’s a ho!” Later, as Trump lamented “all the things [Harris] did” in California, he paused his speech to address something shouted from the stands.

“He says Willie Brown,” Trump said, laughing. The audience guffawed and then cheered for 15 seconds.

Trump turned around to survey the crowd. “Who said that? Who’s the guy?” he said. “Stand up.”

“I didn’t say it,” Trump added. “Remember that - he said it.”

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Knowles reported from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; Bozeman, Montana; St. Cloud, Minnesota; and Coachella, California. Kornfield reported from Charlotte. Rodriguez reported from Tucson.