In recent days, the ex-president has unveiled a broad assault using the insult-driven politics with which he won power in 2016, even as his advisers have been pleading with him to focus his attention on top voter concerns including high prices and immigration.
He is seizing on foreign tragedies to accuse the vice president of responsibility for the deaths of US troops in Afghanistan and claiming she’s complicit in killings of hostages in Gaza. He and his running mate, JD Vance, implied her mixed race — heritage that millions of Americans share — is evidence of a sinister “chameleon”-like character that also explains policy reversals on energy and immigration. In an ugly moment, he amplified a sexually themed social media slander against her. And his dark campaign ads allege she will slash Social Security benefits by welcoming millions of undocumented migrants to the country.
And in a reprise of past GOP campaigns branding Democratic nominees as extreme liberals, Trump and his supporters are trying to frame Harris as a communist and a “Bolshevik.” South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem blasted Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, as a “security risk” because he once taught in China. And Trump has also started to imply the coming election might not be “free and fair” and said in an interview that aired Sunday that it was ridiculous to indict him for “interfering” in the 2020 election. This and other recent comments raised the specter of another national nightmare if he loses in November and refuses to accept defeat.
Trump’s desperation to find traction has also seen him perform his own policy gyrations on reproductive rights as he seeks to narrow a huge gender gapin polling. But his credibility may already be shattered after he built the conservative Supreme Court majority that overturned the nationwide constitutional right to an abortion. Vance also seems to have a knack for alienating female voters — like when he compared Harris to a nerve-struck Miss Teen USA contestant.
Trump is not simply being true to his ill-disciplined self. He’s illustrating his struggle to respond to Harris’ transformation of the race. Increasingly brazen attempts to puncture Harris’ bubble of hope also betray frustration in the Trump camp that she’s managing to distinguish herself from her boss and is presenting a fresher option than her 78-year-old GOP rival. And Trump is showing that there’s almost nothing he won’t do to win.
Trump is trying to compensate for his own liabilities
Trump’s invective amounts to some of the most hardline political rhetoric in years, even by his own standards, and means the next two months are likely to be brutal.
The question is whether this barrage of negative attacks is merely successful in stoking feelings of existential anger Trump uses to drive his base the polls, or whether it begins to tarnish Harris at the margins in battleground states.
It may make some sense for Trump to throw everything he can think of at Harris. In two presidential elections, the ex-president has never risen above 49% of the vote in the so-called blue wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin or in the national popular count. So his chances in November may depend more on destroying the current feel-good factor around Harris and depressing her prospects among small groups of persuadable voters in swing states than on holding out hope of winning over new voters himself.
But Trump’s behavior brings its own risks. His antics last week, including a grinning, thumbs-up gravesite campaign photo-op in Arlington National Cemetery that may have broken the law, could bolster Harris’ warnings that Americans are pining for a chance to leave the bitterness and chaos of the Trump era behind.
Even though Harris has restored the contest to a neck-and-neck race, her campaign recognizes the still potent threat from Trump. “Make no mistake: the next 65 days will be very hard,” Harris campaign manager Jennifer O’Malley Dillion wrote in a weekend memo despite arguing the vice president has multiple paths to the White House. “This race will remain incredibly close, and the voters who will decide this election will require an extraordinary amount of work to win over.”
Harris campaigned in Detroit and with Biden in Pittsburgh to mark Labor Day on Monday, reflecting the importance of union members. Blue-collar workers traditionally voted Democrat, but Trump’s cultural transformation of the GOP now appeals to many workers, especially in rural areas. And Harris’ appearance with Biden in the Steel City previewed how the lame-duck president could help her campaign in a state and among a voting demographic where he remains popular.
The campaign swing comes a week before the critical meeting between Harris and Trump on a debate stage slated for September 10 in Philadelphia — one of the final foreseeable turning points of this campaign, with mail-in voting starting later this week.
Trump’s early efforts to define Harris have failed
Trump’s feral political offensive is a warning for Harris about what may lay ahead and underscores how hard it will be to prolong the smooth rollout of her sudden candidacy, her pick of Walz and her successful convention. But the ex-president’s intensity is also a sign — which is reflected in favorable public polling nationally and in swing states — that his early efforts to negatively define her have not worked.
Harris is being criticized by Republicans for a lack of policy specificity and reversing previous positions on fracking and immigration. But her adoption of centrist positions also appears to be squeezing Trump and frustrating his efforts to land a decisive political attack. Her decision to take on high grocery prices with a vow to clamp down on supermarket giants might explain how she’s narrowed the gap with Trump on who is most trusted on the economy.
The flap over Trump’s visit to Arlington National Cemetery last week also showed how the ex-president’s hardball tactics could hurt him as much as her.
Trump’s honoring of 13 US service members killed in a suicide bombing amid the chaotic US evacuation of Afghanistan in 2021 highlights one of the worst moments of the Biden-Harris administration. And while the vice president joined Situation Room meetings on the crisis, it’s not clear yet whether Trump can saddle her with personal responsibility for the deaths in the minds of voters since Biden was commander in chief at the time.
Harris took steps to counter Trump’s Afghan gambit when she wrote on social media that he had “disrespected sacred ground all for the sake of a political stunt” in filming campaign videos at gravesites and that this was part of a pattern of disparaging the sacrifices of American warriors. Trump responded by posting videos of some of the relatives of the fallen soldiers accusing Harris and Biden of complicity in the murder of their loved ones and supporting Trump.
The harrowing episode showed how Trump is willing to cross lines that more conventional politicians would consider off-limits. While some voters might consider he’s honoring slain troops, others might agree with Harris that he is seizing on the deaths of Americans in foreign wars for political gain.
On other issues, Harris is refusing to be drawn into gutter for political fights with Trump that might tarnish her image. For instance, the vice president was asked by CNN’s Dana Bash in an exclusive interview last week about Trump’s claim that she “happened to turn Black” for political reasons. “Same old tired playbook. Next question, please,” Harris said.
The Harris campaign did, however, jump on Trump’s argument that he did nothing wrong in 2020. The ex-president said in a Fox News interview that aired Sunday: “Whoever heard you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election, where you have every right to do it?”
Harris-Walz spokesperson Sarafina Chitika folded his comment into the campaign’s wider argument that it’s time to consign Trump’s dictatorial instincts to the past. “The American people are ready for a new way forward. They know Vice President Harris is the tough-as-nails prosecutor we need to turn the page on chaos, fear, and division, and uphold the rule of law,” Chitika said.
The exchange encapsulated the bets at the center of the campaign’s bitter endgame: Trump is putting his faith in a searing attempt to do anything it takes to bring Harris down; the vice president is wagering that his extreme attempts to do so will convince enough voters he’s unfit to return to the Oval Office.
