The Republican vice-presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), privately told donors that running against Vice President Harris instead of President Biden made the race more challenging \u2014 an admission at odds with the Donald Trump campaign\u2019s public projections of confidence.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of us were hit with a little bit of a political sucker punch,\u201d Vance said about Biden\u2019s withdrawal on July 21, according to a recording of his remarks at a Saturday fundraiser in Golden Valley, Minn. \u201cThe bad news is that Kamala Harris does not have the same baggage as Joe Biden, because whatever we might have to say, Kamala is a lot younger. And Kamala Harris is obviously not struggling in the same ways that Joe Biden did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Publicly, the Trump campaign has insisted that Harris replacing Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket has not changed the race, arguing that she shares responsibility for public dissatisfaction with Biden\u2019s leadership. Vance told reporters on July 22, a day after Biden dropped out of the race, that there was no difference in running against Harris vs. Biden.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think the political calculus changes at all,\u201d Vance said. \u201cWe were running against Joe Biden\u2019s open border, Kamala Harris\u2019s open border. Kamala Harris supported the green new scam. Kamala Harris, frankly, covered Joe Biden even though it was obvious he was mentally incompetent for a very long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump adviser Jason Miller said in a July 22 Fox News interview: \u201cDemocrats are a bit of jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. And they may have gotten rid of one problem with Joe Biden, but they\u2019ve inherited a whole new problem with Kamala Harris.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump himself has expressed nostalgia for running against Biden (\u201cHe will always be my first choice\u201d) and at the same time dismissed Harris as \u201cworse than Joe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vance, though, gave a different assessment for donors on Saturday ahead of joining Trump at a rally in St. Cloud, Minn. He said Harris was less well-known than Trump or Biden, so Republicans would have to work to shape people\u2019s opinions of her.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a very unique opportunity, but also a very unique challenge, because, let\u2019s be honest, 10 days ago, the two candidates who were running for president, everybody had an opinion about \u2019em. Love \u2019em or hate \u2019em, everybody has an opinion about Donald Trump and Joe Biden after the past eight years,\u201d Vance said. \u201cBut Kamala Harris, people don\u2019t really know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vance said the campaign would try to define Harris based on past positions, which he said included opposing fracking, praising the \u201cdefund the police\u201d movement and supporting decriminalization of unauthorized border crossings. The Harris campaign says she won\u2019t ban fracking. She denounced \u201cdefund the police\u201d after becoming Biden\u2019s running mate, and the current administration opposes decriminalizing border crossings.<\/p>\n
At the fundraiser Vance recounted asking Trump senior adviser Susie Wiles how the race had changed, and he said she answered that she was more confident Trump would win because people like Trump\u2019s polices better than Biden\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Two national polls taken since Biden dropped out showed Trump and Harris within the margin of error, erasing Trump\u2019s earlier leads over Biden in the same surveys.<\/p>\n
Vance spokesman Will Martin said Monday in a statement: \u201cPoll after poll shows President Trump leading Kamala Harris as voters become aware of her weak, failed and dangerously liberal agenda. Her far-left ideas are even more radioactive than Joe Biden, particularly in the key swing states that will decide this election like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meryl Kornfield contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Republican vice-presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), privately told donors that running against Vice President Harris instead of President Biden made the race more challenging \u2014 an admission at odds with the Donald Trump campaign\u2019s public projections of confidence. \u201cAll of us were hit with a little bit of a political sucker punch,\u201d Vance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6908,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}