Rats, Literal and Otherwise

“I can’t believe this is a real photograph. It depicts the president of our nation, as he took to the airwaves and spoke about his fellow citizens as if they were sewer rats,” J.D. Vance, who’s running for Senate in Ohio, tweeted after Biden’s speech.
For the sake of accuracy, it should probably be noted that Biden never used the word “rat” in his speech on Thursday. But Trump not only called his attorney Michael Cohen a rat, he also referred to Baltimore, a major American city, as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”
It’s hard to imagine what would happen if Biden said the same about any part of the U.S.