Former President Donald Trump’s campaign faced fresh allegations of racism following a controversial social media post that juxtaposed two images with a deeply offensive message about immigrants, using it to attack Vice President Kamala Harris’ policies while stating: “Import the Third World. Become the Third World.”
The meme, posted on Tuesday morning, aimed to depict a dystopian vision of what a future under Harris might look like.
Critics, including the NAACP, condemned the meme as a deliberate escalation of racial hostility and anti-immigrant sentiments among conservatives, accusing the Trump campaign of doubling down on discrimination to appeal to affluent voters.
The two images in the social media post dramatically contrasted with one another.
The left image, labeled “Your neighborhood under Trump,” depicts a picturesque townhome community in manicured surroundings, with an American flag hanging off the porch, devoid of any people.
The right image, titled “Your neighborhood under Kamala,” shows a chaotic scene with an avalanche of migrants, mostly Black, blocking a road in New York City last year.
The photo, taken by Getty Images in August 2023, showed migrants camped outside the Roosevelt Hotel, which had been converted into a reception center for newcomers from the U.S. southern border with Mexico.
Social media users overwhelmingly expressed disgust over the post, with one person writing: “This is one of the most racist posts I’ve ever seen. Wow.” Another person remarked: “The racism is off the charts here!”
“So the strategy is ‘we hate Black people,’” someone else noted. One person who goes by @SundaeDivine told the Trump War Room, “You make me embarrassed to be white.”
A handful of people asked, “What’s racist about the ad?” but the majority of voices condemned the post as racist.
The Trump campaign defended the post, asserting that it “highlights the stark contrast between President Trump’s and Kamala Harris’ immigration policies.”
“President Trump puts Americans first and secured our border. Kamala Harris has opened our border to millions of illegal immigrants from all over the world and has forced struggling taxpayers to pay for their free entry into the country,” Trump campaign’s national press secretary Karoline Leavitt told ABC News in a statement.
On Tuesday night, former Trump campaign adviser Bryan Lanza defended the Trump campaign’s social media post during a CNN panel, insisting that race was not a factor and asserting that Republicans don’t “look at skin color” despite the clear racial undertones in the campaign’s message.
Republican commentator Tricia McLaughlin, also appearing on the CNN panel, dismissed the controversy, claiming there was nothing to see here.
“I don’t think that that image is racist,” she said. “I think that they’re showing chaos.”
But that explanation was especially hard to swallow after Trump has repeatedly used disparaging rhetoric about undocumented immigrants on the campaign trail, portraying them as criminals and mental health patients. Trump has frequently used dog-whistle terms to rile up his supporters, referring to immigrants as “animals” and alleging they were “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Critics said the post was another example of the Trump campaign using divisive rhetoric to stoke racial tensions.
“Don’t just take our word for it. They are showing all of us just how racist they are,” wrote NAACP’s X account. “This is what’s on the ballot this November.
Bill Burton, former deputy press secretary for former President Barack Obama, commented on X: “Well, didn’t take too long for the Trump campaign to get to the openly racist part of their effort.”
The Trump campaign has used similar campaign ads, portraying migrant encampments and accusing Harris of prioritizing “illegals.” They highlight crimes by migrants and promote their “America-first” agenda, pledging immediate deportations if Trump returns to office.
Beyond the controversy surrounding the social media post, Trump has persisted in falsely claiming that Harris was appointed as “border czar despite her having no official role or special responsibilities related to border issues.
Instead, Harris was assigned to lead diplomatic efforts aimed at addressing the root causes of migration from Central America, with a primary focus on El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras — a role similar to the one Joe Biden held as vice president during the Obama administration.
“Kamala Harris has pursued a policy of allowing large numbers of unvetted migrants into our country,” Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, wrote Wednesday on X. “It has led to predictable and extremely tragic results.”
During a Monday interview on X, Trump told billionaire Elon Musk that the migrant crisis has “overwhelmed” New York City. Trump also doubled down on his claim that undocumented immigrants are “non-productive,” despite Musk’s counterpoint that many are “probably good, hard-working people.”
Behind the scenes, Trump is reportedly freaking out over Vice President Kamala Harris’ unexpected candidacy, while his political attacks have failed to resonate with voters and struggled to derail her growing momentum after taking the baton from Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket nearly a month ago.
Sources close to Trump say the former president has been thrown off balance by the challenge of facing a younger, energetic Black female opponent who appears impervious to his attacks.
In a previous political attack in July, the Trump campaign falsely accused Harris of raising bail money for Jaleel Stallings, an Army veteran who was charged with the attempted murder of two Minneapolis police officers days after George Floyd’s death in 2020.
Trump used the same issue to attack Biden during the 2020 campaign, but in both cases, Trump concealed the fact that a jury acquitted Stallings on all charges, that he had acted in self-defense, and that one of the cops involved in his violent arrest pleaded guilty to assaulting him.
After Stallings was charged, it was later revealed that police falsified their reports about his arrest, stating that Stallings fired his gun first. Police also never identified themselves when they confronted Stallings.
The city of Minneapolis later paid Stallings $1.5 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that police violated his civil rights.
It seemed that Trump’s campaign was scraping for anything to discredit Harris as the nation inches closer to the 2024 election.
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who extensively covered the Trump White House, explained that Trump is attempting to provoke Harris into a public racial debate, aiming to find a way to undermine her, and noting that he has difficulty with female opponents.
On CNN, Haberman told Anderson Cooper that Trump is particularly unsettled by Harris because she is a Black woman, and he finds it harder to attack women, especially Black women, compared to male opponents like President Biden.
“You can see his campaign if you look at the Trump War Room account on Twitter. They are trying pretty hard to bait her and to bait Democrats into a fight about race, and that has been something so far that the Harris campaign has not taken the bait on, but this is something that we have seen him do before. It is something that comes up — has come up in other races,” she said Tuesday on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360.”
For the most part, Harris has steered clear of responding to Trump’s provocations, keeping the focus on her public service record and policies for the middle class.
At a campaign event in Texas, Harris condemned Trump as putting on “the same old show of divisiveness,” telling the audience, “the American people deserve better.”
