Trump resumes his campaign to attack Kamala Harris

Donald Trump is in a hurry to pivot his presidential campaign to address Kamala Harris, the current vice president of the United States and likely Democratic presidential nominee. She plans to attack her career as vice president and her past in California after the nominee so far, President Joe Biden, decided to step aside, according to sources familiar with the strategy.

The Trump campaign sees Harris as the Democratic politician most likely to become the presidential nominee, especially after Biden publicly endorsed her. In recent weeks, they have been preparing investigative documents against her. Biden’s withdrawal has shaken the Democratic Party a month before the convention in which they must nominate a presidential candidate, but it has also frustrated Trump’s strategists.

Pro-Trump political action committees such as MAGA Inc (Make America Great Again), they plan to launch a wave of attacks against Harris, with a television media plan worth around five million euros, including advertising in decisive states like Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona, presenting her as the puppet master of the Biden administration.

The Trump campaign is betting that the Democratic Party will face the wrath of its progressive base if the vice president is not nominated. Harris would become the first black woman to be nominated as the party’s presidential candidate. Some of Trump’s senior campaign advisers are not sure she will be the nominee, further complicating their strategy.

Attacks that no longer work

Trump’s campaign was always designed to defeat one man — Biden — and in recent weeks Trump’s allies have worked hard to keep the president viable as a candidate because they really wanted to run against him.

The problem for the Trump campaign is that their best lines of attack against Biden based on his age and mental acuity can no longer be used against any other Democratic candidate and, in fact, can now be used against Trump, who will now be the oldest candidate. The millions of dollars Trump-aligned political action committees spent creating offensive ads against Biden, including a recent ad last week that focused on the president’s gaffe in last month’s presidential debate on military deaths, have been wasted.

Two sources consulted Guardian He says Biden’s withdrawal was a worst-case scenario for the Trump campaign ahead of the November 2024 election race.

According to reports, the Trump campaign issued an internal memo to its team telling them not to engage with Democratic politicians and supporters who are calling on Biden to step down from the campaign, as it fears they could help push it over the edge. Guardian,

Why do they care about Harris?

For several weeks, Trump’s strategists have been more concerned about the prospect of facing Harris than Biden, as some of his advisers believe the vice president can better convey his pro-abortion messages and those about Trump’s legal problems.

Harris has spoken out openly in favor of abortion rights, while Trump has told his advisers that he believes it is a losing election issue after Republicans scored very poor results in the 2022 legislative elections following the repeal of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court. And the fact that Harris has been a prosecutor in the past could shed a negative light on Trump’s recent criminal conviction in New York on 34 counts of buying his silence and falsifying business records related to paying porn actress Stormy Daniels to influence the 2016 election.

Some of Trump’s allies, including those from the influential political action committees MAGA Inc. and Save America, have also said Harris has a sense of humor; clips of her quirky phrases — such as “Did you fall from a coconut tree?” (a question the vice president’s mother used to ask her to explain that her accomplishments are the merit of many people and many generations) — have gone viral on TikTok and other social networks.

Another problem for the Trump campaign is that the Democratic Party’s options for presidential nominee and vice president are endless: Harris could lead the field as number two with a large number of potential running mates, or she might not even become the nominee.

However, Trump’s team also believes Harris has vulnerabilities of her own that could neutralize any advantage or momentum she generates in the weeks leading up to the Democratic National Convention, which begins on August 19, according to two sources.

The Trump campaign believes it can portray her as responsible for the “open” US southern border under the Biden administration, and define her as a senator and, before that, as California attorney general and San Francisco district attorney. With this, they aim to resurrect the same issues that plagued her in the 2020 Democratic primaries, in which she was bashed for being soft on crime and too soft on criminals who were first punished for drug trafficking when she was a prosecutor in California.

Translation by Emma Reuter.