Donald Trump showed up in battleground North Carolina for a big speech on the economy – and one of his unhinged rallies broke out.
But amid the insults, trash talk, rage and lies, the former president blundered into the thing he’d been seeking for days: a strategy to take on Vice President Kamala Harris.
The former president took the stage Wednesday with Republican commentators pining for signs that he’d stabilized after more than three weeks of fury and disorientation after President Joe Biden pulled out of the 2024 race.
Anyone hoping for an elusive Trump pivot would have been disappointed, as they almost always are, as he branded Harris “crazy” and “not smart,” while lampooning her laugh with sexist attacks and turning up the heat of his immigration demagoguery.
Trump’s still uncontrolled bitterness that he’s no longer running against Biden stole the headlines from a speech that his campaign billed as a serious exercise devoted to the economy – the issue that voters care about most.
But his remarks, at least the scripted version of them, offered the first signs that the Trump campaign is beginning to settle on a coherent, albeit extreme and divisive, plan to react to a new general election foe. The event, therefore, offered a preview of how the race to Election Day will unfold after the Democratic National Convention next week.
Trump’s plan to slow Harris could end up hurting himself
The new approach, if Trump ever musters the discipline to implement it in a concentrated way, is deeply personal and designed to destroy the idea that Harris, just the second woman to head a major party presidential ticket, is competent to serve. It involves blaming her for the scourge of inflation and high grocery prices that haunted Biden’s administration, under the new title of “Kamalanomics.”
With Harris expected to lay out her own economic plan on Friday, Trump’s team also wants to frustrate any effort by the vice president to bill her candidacy as a fresh start for economic policy. Trump also stepped up efforts to paint Harris as an extreme liberal – a strategy that has sometimes worked for Republican presidential campaigns in the past – at a time when conservative media is making comparisons between her and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Trump is also portraying Harris as a flip flopper who backed away from past positions on energy and health care but who would return to what he says is her radical past if elected. It’s an attempt to shatter public trust in the new Democratic nominee and builds on his previous questioning of her identifying as a Black woman, as well as a South Asian American. In the words of Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, Harris is a “chameleon” who changes her politics and racial identify to suit her quest for power.
The former president is also doubling down on the politics of fear, conjuring what he claims are catastrophes at home and abroad that would unfold if Harris were president – from World War III to a Great Depression. Mixing in his dystopian vision on immigration and crime, Trump is tapping into insecurity among Americans struggling to afford a decent lifestyle and who may be alarmed that US enemies like China and Russia are on the march.
But the question for Trump as Harris surges is how much he’s already hurt himself with his tantrums and false claims that Biden’s replacement on the Democratic ticket represents some kind of coup. New polls are showing just how dramatically Harris has transformed the election. The vice president has uncorked an explosion of enthusiasm in a party that was demoralized just three weeks ago. And she’s repairing the holes in the Democratic coalition that threatened to doom Biden’s second term hopes among minority and young voters especially.
Trump’s approach, showcasing his volcanic temperament and vicious personal style, seems a strange way to win over the suburban, female and moderate voters in battleground states who have become even more critical to the result in November now that Harris has returned the race to an effective tie.
The nastiness of Trump’s attacks may come across as deeply offensive to some female voters.
For instance, Trump on Wednesday again mocked Harris’ laugh – using it to suggest that she is unfit for the presidency. “What happened to her laugh? I haven’t heard that laugh in about a week,” he said. “That’s why they keep her off the stage,” he added, calling her laugh that “of a crazy person” and “career-threatening.”
And for most of Trump’s speech on Wednesday, he appeared to still be playing to the base voters who adore him rather than trying to appeal to a more centrist audience. Indeed, he even mocked the idea of giving a serious speech — perhaps annoyed by Republican former office holders – like former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Trump’s erstwhile primary foe, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who pleaded with him to focus.
“This is a little different day, this isn’t a rally,” Trump told his crowd. “They wanted to do a speech on the economy so we are doing this as an intellectual speech. You are all intellectuals today.”
How Trump will try to slow Harris’ momentum
Even though his frequent digressions defused the impact of any clear attack on Harris, Trump’s Wednesday remarks represented his most expansive attempt yet to try to neutralize her threat. And they are likely to be quickly picked up by his conservative media boosters as the anti-Harris campaign accelerates.
— Trump gave notice that he intends to diminish Harris’ achievements, intellect and character. “She’s not a brilliant person. She’s not a smart person. She is not very smart, but it is crazy, isn’t it? Isn’t it crazy? She was so disrespected just a few weeks ago, and now it’s like Kamala, Kamala!” he said.
— The former president is also targeting Harris as an extreme left-winger somehow alien to the politics of most Americans. “On November 6, she will be a San Francisco liberal again, destroying everything in sight,” he said.
— Trump is seeking to close off any attempt by Harris to distinguish herself from the policies of the Biden administration. “Kamala has declared that tackling inflation will be a day one priority. But day one for Kamala was three-and-a-half years ago. Why hasn’t she done it?” he said. “By the way, they are a team — she is trying to throw him overboard … no, no, they are a team.”
— Allied to this effort is an attempt to saddle Harris with direct blame for the economic struggles of many working Americans. “Does anyone here feel richer under Kamala Harris (and) crooked Joe than you were during the Trump administration? Is anything less expensive under Kamala Harris and crooked Joe?” Trump said. And returning to personal attacks, Trump promised not to “let this incompetent socialist lunatic keep breaking our economy for four more years.”
— The campaign is arguing Harris will return to her previous policies after disavowing them, for instance, by banning fracking or by seeking a single-payer health care system. “For every position the fake new Kamala takes … the real Kamala said the exact opposite,” Trump claimed.
— Republicans have been falsely branding Harris a “border czar” ever since she was tapped by Biden to work to tackle some of the social and financial conditions in Central American nations that form the root causes of migration. This will be a centerpiece of the new bid to take down the Democratic nominee. “The migrants that Harris let in are raping our women and hurting our children and now Kamala wants to let them pillage Social Security,” Trump claimed baselessly.
The former president seemed far more interested in passages of the speech that insulted his opponent than the details of his own economic policy. But in laying out his plans for tax cuts, massive tariffs and slashing regulations, he made himself an easy target for the Harris campaign.
“Trump has no plan, no vision, and no meaningful interest in helping build up the middle class,” the campaign said in a statement. It also laid out a contrast of what it said were two “very different” economic agendas that voters will chose between in November: “One that builds up the middle class, versus one that helps billionaires and big corporations at working families’ expense.”
Many Republicans believe that voter dismay over high prices in recent years gives Trump a priceless chance to reclaim the presidency. But his antics on Wednesday suggest that he’s fully capable of squandering the opening.