Donald Trump\u2019s aides have said they aim to beat Vice President Harris in November by portraying her as a San Francisco liberal who is responsible for illegal border crossings and inflation.<\/p>\n
Yet in the past 48 hours, Trump has repeatedly deviated from that messaging to more familiar territory: personal attacks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black,\u201d he declared at an event hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists Wednesday. \u201cIs she Indian or is she Black?\u201d<\/p>\n
Harris will be \u201clike a play toy\u201d that world leaders will \u201cwalk all over,\u201d he told Fox News\u2019 Laura Ingraham, in a clip that aired Tuesday night. \u201cI don\u2019t want to say as to why. But a lot of people understand it.\u201d And he claimed in a radio interview that Harris, whose husband is Jewish, \u201cdoesn\u2019t like Jewish people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s statements are emblematic of the broader challenge the GOP faces: Many of his aides and his Republican allies want to focus on Harris\u2019s record. They have watched Democratic enthusiasm about the vice president\u2019s campaign and believe that some of her personal qualities could help, not hurt her, with independent voters.<\/p>\n
But Trump himself keeps changing the subject.<\/p>\n
This week, the Trump campaign launched a $12 million ad buy that featured video of Harris dancing, as the narrator declared: \u201cThis is America\u2019s border czar and she has failed us,\u201d a reference to President Biden\u2019s decision to ask Harris to lead a multipronged effort to reduce mass migration from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. MAGA Inc., a super PAC supporting Trump, ran an ad accusing Harris of covering up \u201cJoe\u2019s obvious mental decline.\u201d Another ad described her as a \u201cdangerous San Francisco liberal.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, it\u2019s really about demonstrating through her own words how dangerous, how weak and failed she really is, and it\u2019s not hard to do when you have her doing the talking,\u201d said Chris LaCivita, a top Trump campaign adviser. \u201cWhy tell the American public what she\u2019s for when she does such a good job herself?\u201d<\/p>\n
LaCivita added: \u201cWith Joe Biden, it was the walking \u2026 with Kamala Harris, it\u2019s the talking.\u201d<\/p>\n
But despite the ad blitz, Trump\u2019s words, rather than Harris\u2019s, dominated the news this week. Trump\u2019s false accusation that Harris downplayed her Black heritage forced Republicans to respond throughout the day Wednesday. Harris attended Howard University, a prominent historically Black institution and joined a historically Black sorority.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was born Black and I\u2019ll die Black and I am proud of it,\u201d she said in 2019. \u201cAnd I am not going to make any excuses for it for anybody because they don\u2019t understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even as several Senate Republicans declined to weigh in on Trump\u2019s remarks, he doubled down on them. At his rally in Harrisburg, Pa., a screen showed the headline of a Business Insider story that said: \u201cCalifornia\u2019s Kamala Harris becomes first Indian American U.S. senator.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also posted a video on his social media site, Truth Social, featuring Harris speaking to Indian American comedian Mindy Kaling, in which Kaling refers to Harris\u2019s Indian heritage. Trump claimed: \u201cCrazy Kamala is saying she\u2019s Indian, not Black. This is a big deal. Stone cold phony. She uses everybody, including her racial identity!\u201d<\/p>\n
Since Biden dropped out of the presidential race, Trump has also called Harris \u201cdumb as a rock,\u201d questioned her legal credentials and mocked her laugh.<\/p>\n
People close to Trump doubt that the personal attacks will be an effective strategy. Alleging the election was stolen, defending Jan. 6 rioters and getting into fights with Harris about race or personality \u201care not winning issues for us,\u201d one person close to Trump said. Comments that seem derogatory about women also don\u2019t help, and neither does attacking her personally, this person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to criticize the former president\u2019s messaging so far.<\/p>\n
Instead, the campaign wants Trump to make data arguments on food prices, gas prices, illegal border crossings and tout his foreign policy record, and not talk about her race or gender, the person added,<\/p>\n
Trump has publicly lamented the change at the top of the ticket, calling it a \u201ccoup\u201d at a recent event. In private, he\u2019s complained about Harris\u2019s rise in the polls, according to another person familiar with his thinking who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose private conversations. Trump has also been frustrated that Harris has received positive media coverage, while his vice-presidential pick, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), has come under criticism, this person said.<\/p>\n
Even though Trump campaign officials and allies publicly maintain that the fundamentals of the contest haven\u2019t changed, some Republicans, including Vance, acknowledge privately that the race has shifted quickly.<\/p>\n
Vance told donors during a Saturday fundraiser in Golden Valley, Minn., that the change at the top of the Democratic ticket was a \u201clittle bit of a political sucker punch\u201d and that Harris \u201cdoes not have the same baggage as Joe Biden, because whatever we might have to say, Kamala is a lot younger.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since Biden dropped out of the presidential race, Trump and Harris have moved into a virtual tie in a two-way vote choice, with Trump at 47 percent support and Harris at 46 percent, according to a Washington Post polling average.<\/p>\n
Harris\u2019s favorability rating increased to 43 percent last week, up from 35 percent the previous week, according to an ABC-Ipsos poll conducted last week. Trump\u2019s favorability rating decreased slightly to 36 percent from 40 percent the previous week.<\/p>\n
The Trump campaign\u2019s messaging is \u201cscattershot,\u201d said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who worked on Sen. Marco Rubio\u2019s 2016 presidential campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey weren\u2019t able to brand Biden in 2020 and they haven\u2019t been able to brand Kamala Harris in 2024,\u201d he said. \u201cThe arguments that they do make are very ideological in nature, which has never worked for Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n
Conant added that Trump does best when he portrays himself as the outsider and said the campaign hasn\u2019t done enough to portray Harris as an establishment pick.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead, they\u2019re saying she\u2019s too progressive which is not an argument that\u2019s proven very effective in modern politics,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Prominent Republicans in Washington say they have not been given messaging from Trump\u2019s team on how to attack Harris. One top aide to a GOP senator said they were trying to follow the campaign\u2019s lead, but it was difficult to follow sometimes.<\/p>\n
One Republican close to the Trump campaign, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly, described the campaign ad about the border as a positive development.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe challenge is to stay on message,\u201d the Republican said.<\/p>\n
Scott Clement and Maria Sacchetti contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Donald Trump\u2019s aides have said they aim to beat Vice President Harris in November by portraying her as a San Francisco liberal who is responsible for illegal border crossings and inflation. Yet in the past 48 hours, Trump has repeatedly deviated from that messaging to more familiar territory: personal attacks. \u201cI didn\u2019t know she was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7129,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7128","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\/7128","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=7128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}