Trump campaign switches gears to confront a Harris challenge

WASHINGTON – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will try to show swing voters that his likely new rival, Vice-President Kamala Harris, has her fingerprints all over two issues that he is counting on for victory in November: immigration and the cost of living.

Sources within the Trump campaign said it will cast Ms Harris, the likely Democratic candidate after

President Joe Biden quit the race on July 21

, as the “co-pilot” of administration policies it says are behind both sources of voter discontent.

Mr Biden’s sudden exit and endorsement of Ms Harris have upended the race, just days after Trump survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally on July 13.

Sources told Reuters that Trump’s campaign had for weeks been preparing for Ms Harris should Mr Biden drop out and she win her party’s nomination.

“Harris will be easier to beat than Joe Biden would have been,” Trump told CNN shortly after Mr Biden’s announcement.

Trump’s campaign has signalled that it will tie her as tightly as possible to Mr Biden’s immigration policy, which Republicans say is to blame for millions of people crossing the southern border with Mexico illegally.

The second line of attack will revolve around the economy. Public opinion polls consistently show that Americans are unhappy with high food and fuel costs, as well as interest rates that have made buying a home less affordable.

“She’s the co-pilot of the Biden vision,” said one Trump adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity during last week’s Republican National Convention, where a unified party anointed Trump as its nominee in the White House race.

“If they want to switch to Biden 2.0 and have ‘Cackling’ Kamala at the top of the ticket, we’re good either way,” the adviser said, repeating an insult the campaign has been trying out for weeks focused on how the Vice-President laughs.

Make America Great Again Inc, a super political action committee backing Trump, said on July 21 it was pulling out anti-Biden television ads that had been set to run in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania and replacing them with an ad attacking Ms Harris.

The 30-second ad accuses Ms Harris of hiding Mr Biden’s infirmity from the public, and it seeks to pin the administration’s record solely on her. “Kamala knew Joe couldn’t do the job, so she did it. Look what she got done: a border invasion, runaway inflation, the American Dream dead,” the ad’s narrator says.

Trump, known for using insulting and sometimes offensive language to attack his opponents, gave supporters at a rally in Michigan on July 20 a taste of the insults he is likely to fling at Ms Harris in the coming days.

“I call her ‘laughing Kamala’. You ever watch a laugh? She’s crazy. You can tell a lot by a laugh. She’s crazy. She’s nuts,” he said.

Altered race

The Democratic Party has yet to determine how to move forward, and there is as yet no guarantee that Ms Harris will emerge as the party’s nominee despite Mr Biden’s endorsement.

Ms Harris as the Democratic nominee would alter the race in perhaps unforeseen ways, political strategists said.

A 59-year-old woman who is black and Asian American would fashion an entirely new dynamic with Trump, 78, offering a vivid generational and cultural split-screen. The United States has yet to elect a woman president in its 248-year history.

Mr Rodell Mollineau, a Democratic strategist and long-time congressional aide, said Ms Harris would be able to mount “a more energetic campaign with excitement from younger voters and people of colour” after Mr Biden struggled to energise these important Democratic Party voting blocs.

A former prosecutor and California attorney-general as well as a former US senator, Ms Harris would be able to use “her years of litigation experience to effectively prosecute Trump in the court of public opinion”, Mr Mollineau said.

Mr Chip Felkel, a Republican strategist, cautioned that it would be a mistake for the Trump campaign to assume Ms Harris could serve as a simple stand-in for Mr Biden, because of her potential appeal to different parts of the electorate.

Recent polls have shown Ms Harris to be competitive with Trump. In a hypothetical head-to-head match-up, Ms Harris and Trump were tied with 44 per cent support each in a July 15-16 Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Ms Jeanette Hoffman, a Republican political consultant, said despite the contrasts that Ms Harris would bring to the ticket, her close ties to Mr Biden would be a drag on her candidacy.

Ms Harris “doesn’t represent the change America is looking for”, Ms Hoffman said.

Maga Inc chief executive Taylor Budowich said his group had commissioned opposition research on several possible Democratic candidates.

“Maga Inc is prepared for all outcomes of a Democrat Party that has only brought chaos and failure,” he said. REUTERS