The superficial, oversimplified reason Democrats decided to turn the page on President Joe Biden in the 2024 election was that he was too old. The more specific reason may have been that this problem \u2014 manifested in his stilted, often incoherent speaking and a light schedule \u2014 rendered him largely incapable of driving a consistent message about Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
That fateful June 27 debate epitomized it. Biden didn\u2019t even mention Project 2025, for instance, despite its quickly emerging as a leading Democratic talking point. And that was a big problem, especially with Trump suddenly more popular than he\u2019d been in many years.<\/p>\n
That very liability has now landed firmly in Republicans\u2019 laps.<\/p>\n
Amid some Republican consternation about Trump and his campaign\u2019s slow build toward making a case against Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump emerged Thursday from his relative obscurity to deliver a news conference at Mar-a-Lago.<\/p>\n
He spoke and took questions at length \u2014 for more than an hour.<\/p>\n
One thing he did not do: Offer anything amounting to a coherent or detailed case against Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D).<\/p>\n
Trump has for years been prone to tangents and riffs and generalities, but even by his standards this session was unfocused. And that was despite the apparent reason for calling the news conference in the first place: to take on an opponent who was rising in the polls.<\/p>\n
Trump said repeatedly that Harris and Walz were bad on issues, but often without saying how or even clearly describing the issue. He dwelled on process and polling, as well as Biden and Harris\u2019s replacement of him, rather than Harris herself. And he for whatever reason didn\u2019t even summon Walz\u2019s name \u2014 referring to him as Harris\u2019s pick, the \u201cnew governor from Minnesota\u201d (Walz was first elected six years ago), the \u201cMinnesota gentleman\u201d and Harris\u2019s \u201cnew friend.\u201d (Sometimes politicians avoid naming their opponents while lodging attacks, but Trump was perfectly happy to cite Harris by name, repeatedly.)<\/p>\n
Just as Biden failed to invoke Project 2025, Trump didn\u2019t even mention many of the biggest potential sticking points for the Democratic ticket. There was nothing on Harris\u2019s 2020 campaign support for banning offshore drilling and fracking, or her approving comments about the Green New Deal and \u201cstarting from scratch\u201d with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Ditto Walz allowing undocumented immigrants to apply for driver\u2019s licenses or his stewardship of the Minneapolis unrest after George Floyd\u2019s murder.<\/p>\n
Last month I highlighted seven potential vulnerabilities for Harris from that 2020 campaign; Trump mentioned only two of them \u2014 both glancingly.<\/p>\n
On Harris\u2019s past support for a mandatory gun buyback program for assault weapons, Trump said twice simply that Harris wants to \u201ctake away\u201d people\u2019s guns. He also briefly mentioned Harris wanting to \u201cdefund the police.\u201d (Harris\u2019s past comments sympathized with the defund-the-police movement but didn\u2019t explicitly advocate defunding the police.)<\/p>\n
That the other things went unmentioned was particularly astonishing given that many of them feed into the same themes Trump sought to play up: inflation, energy prices, immigration and crime.<\/p>\n
When Trump did bring up specific attacks, they often lacked any real clarity and were almost perfunctory.<\/p>\n
He mentioned \u201cwhat they\u2019ve done to the national reserves.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Strategic National Reserves is, as you know very well, because you cover it, but what they\u2019ve done is incredible,\u201d Trump said. \u201cThey\u2019ve just \u2014 for the sake of getting some votes, for the sake of having gasoline, you know, that\u2019s meant for wars. It\u2019s meant for, like, tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Left out? What the Biden administration actually did with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which was to deplete it.<\/p>\n
Trump repeatedly accused Harris of having \u201cdestroyed\u201d San Francisco and California as a prosecutor and state attorney general. About the closest he got to saying how was a brief reference to \u201cno cash bail, weak on crime.\u201d (In fact, Harris\u2019s push to eliminate cash bail came after she left those state positions; she had previously pushed for higher bail amounts in some cases.)<\/p>\n
Trump was asked, \u201cHow you are going to go after Black voters now that she is the nominee?\u201d<\/p>\n
He proceeded to summarize his poll numbers and express confidence, before landing on this recipe: \u201cI think ultimately, they\u2019ll like me better because I\u2019m going to give them security, safety and jobs; I\u2019m going to give them a good economy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump referenced Harris having attacked Biden in 2019, saying she was \u201cnasty with the \u2014 calling him a racist, and the school bus and all of the different things.\u201d The \u201cschool bus\u201d reference appeared to be Harris attacking Biden\u2019s past stance on busing Black students to different schools.<\/p>\n
Trump was asked how Harris compares as an opponent to Biden and Hillary Clinton. He briefly spoke about how Clinton was smarter than Harris \u2014 rather than, for example, accusing Harris of being more liberal \u2014 and quickly asked for the next question.<\/p>\n
And with Republicans hitting Walz for a \u201ctrans refuge\u201d bill that protected access to gender-affirming care, Trump merely said the Minnesota governor was \u201cheavy into the transgender world.\u201d (He followed that by accusing the Democratic ticket of being \u201cheavy into lots of different worlds, having to do with safety\u201d \u2014 whatever that meant.)<\/p>\n
Trump summarized:<\/p>\n
\u201cThese guys get up \u2014 think of it: We\u2019re going to give you no security, we\u2019re going to give you a weak military, we\u2019re going to give you no walls, no borders, no anything, we\u2019re going to \u2014 all these things they\u2019re doing,\u201d Trump said. \u201cI mean, the transgender became such a big thing. But they do all of these things.\u201d<\/p>\n
But \u201cthese things\u201d were largely outcomes rather than actual policies. And to the extent Trump won\u2019t or can\u2019t offer details about why Democrats will drive things in those directions \u2014 or really demonstrate any familiarity with Harris\u2019s and Walz\u2019s actual records \u2014 Republicans might begin to worry about their own candidate\u2019s campaigning wherewithal.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The superficial, oversimplified reason Democrats decided to turn the page on President Joe Biden in the 2024 election was that he was too old. The more specific reason may have been that this problem \u2014 manifested in his stilted, often incoherent speaking and a light schedule \u2014 rendered him largely incapable of driving a consistent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7624,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7623","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\/7623","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=7623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}