Donald Trump’s supporters are recalibrating their campaign to align Kamala Harris with Barack Obama in a bid to derail the momentum she has gained since Joe Biden stepped aside.
Initial attempts to tie in Harris to Biden’s policies failed to dent the vice president’s surge in popularity.
Now the focus appears to have switched to unsettling independents who may have been uncertain about Obama’s presidency, in hopes of winning over voters still on the fence about the 2024 presidential election.
The strategy became evident as Fox Business Network guest Monica Crowley, a former Trump assistant treasury secretary, described the vice president as “Obama in a skirt” in a segment suggesting the mainstream media was trying to dress up the likely Democratic presidential nominee as the biggest breakthrough since the first Black president.
“They are trying to sell her as Obama in a skirt,” said Crowley. “Basically, trying to create momentum around Kamala Harris based on identity politics, the fact that she’s a woman of color and would be the first woman of color as president.”
She said Harris went from “historically the most unpopular vice president in recent American history” to the “belle of the ball” in the media in the space of a week.
Asked how the Trump campaign planned to “counteract that kind of messaging,” the former president’s spokesperson Caroline Sunshine said: “We’re watching Kamala Harris get the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama treatment from the liberal mainstream media and the Democrat Party.
“The trouble is that the Democrat Party and the mainstream media have the same blinders on that they had way back in 2016. It’s almost the exact same playbook.”