Former president—and current presidential candidate—Donald Trump has already previewed his attacks on Kamala Harris, now a leading candidate to become the Democratic Presidential nominee after President Joe Biden's decision to step aside.
In a campaign rally yesterday)" href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-attack-crazy-kamala-anger-1928072__;!!LsXw!XV7djYBWS1WkHY8isS4J0AmCHACMoszkYsgc7UB1-v_6xQ-HepDW-lD_3UgPO_c98SYKdw9BpP9-NYjsFwFyC1OMVX8pzTz5Buuv$">campaign rally yesterday in Grand Rapids, Michigan—his first since the assassination attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania a week ago—Trump said, “I call her Laughing Kamala. Have you watched her laugh? She is crazy. You know, you can tell a lot by a laugh. No, she's crazy. She's nuts.”
Trump and senior Republicans have been preparing the groundwork for attacks on Harris for weeks, ever since Biden's disastrous debate appearance three weeks ago. A week after that debacle, in a July 4th message, Trump debuted the line on Truth Social)" href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112729384937320696__;!!LsXw!XV7djYBWS1WkHY8isS4J0AmCHACMoszkYsgc7UB1-v_6xQ-HepDW-lD_3UgPO_c98SYKdw9BpP9-NYjsFwFyC1OMVX8pzecF4mWi$">Truth Social: “Respects to our potentially new Democrat Challenger, Laffin’ Kamala Harris.”
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But Trump's “Laffin‘ Kamala” nickname is sure to be only one of the attack lines that Republicans will unleash on Harris—and may not even be the most important. As the New York Times)" href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.nytimes.com/2024/07/20/us/politics/trump-harris-strategy.html__;!!LsXw!XV7djYBWS1WkHY8isS4J0AmCHACMoszkYsgc7UB1-v_6xQ-HepDW-lD_3UgPO_c98SYKdw9BpP9-NYjsFwFyC1OMVX8pzZ25vPw8$">New York Times reported earlier this weekend, “The Trump team has already prepared opposition research books on Ms. Harris, and has similar dossiers on other Democrats. But the bulk of the preparations so far have been focused on Ms. Harris.”
A glimpse into how else Trump and the Republicans will frame their attacks on Harris was revealed last week when Chris LaCivita, co-chair of the Trump campaign, sppokeat the RNC in Milwaukee: “Every single thing that Biden did is an issue that she is complicit in.”
LaCivita, according to political site The Hill,)" href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4781765-kamala-harris-biden-2024-rnc-convention-milwaukee-trump/mlite/__;!!LsXw!XV7djYBWS1WkHY8isS4J0AmCHACMoszkYsgc7UB1-v_6xQ-HepDW-lD_3UgPO_c98SYKdw9BpP9-NYjsFwFyC1OMVX8pzZqA4AjB$">, claimed that the clearest line of attack against Harris would be the phrase “border czar.”
And just like that, last week in Milwaukee speaker after speaker referred to Harris as the ‘border czar’—citing, not entirely accurately, the role she assumed in 2021 when Biden named her the lead on ‘immigration issues.’ with specific responsibility for looking at the ‘root causes’ of migration from central America.
Senator Tom Cotton, of Arkansas, accused Biden and Harris of welcoming “a third world invasion;” Senator Eric Schmitt, from Montana, accused the Biden-Harris ticket of opening the border “to terrorists, to criminals.”
But Trump and the Republicans will not stop at the border. Another lightning rod for attacks on Harris will be her role as a district attorney in San Francisco and, later, her role as California Attorney General)" href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/oag.ca.gov/history/32harris__;!!LsXw!XV7djYBWS1WkHY8isS4J0AmCHACMoszkYsgc7UB1-v_6xQ-HepDW-lD_3UgPO_c98SYKdw9BpP9-NYjsFwFyC1OMVX8pzQQmAGh-$">California Attorney General.
On July 5, a day after the first “Laffin’ Kamala” attack, one of Trump's senior campaign officials, Jason Miller, said of Harris that, “she owns all of the Biden incompetence and failure, plus she adds radical ideology. Biden kowtows to California liberals. She actually is one.)" href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.axios.com/2024/07/05/behind-the-curtain-trumps-kamala-harris-plan__;!!LsXw!XV7djYBWS1WkHY8isS4J0AmCHACMoszkYsgc7UB1-v_6xQ-HepDW-lD_3UgPO_c98SYKdw9BpP9-NYjsFwFyC1OMVX8pzU9OWQnX$">She actually is one.”
A few days later, Trump, speaking at a rally in Miami, worked this line into his speech)" href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-holds-rally-florida-running-mate-suspense-builds-2024-07-09/__;!!LsXw!XV7djYBWS1WkHY8isS4J0AmCHACMoszkYsgc7UB1-v_6xQ-HepDW-lD_3UgPO_c98SYKdw9BpP9-NYjsFwFyC1OMVX8pzWebzMri$">his speech: “I don't think Kamala Harris's California socialism is going to go down well with the people of Doral, the people of Miami or the people of Florida. Because in Florida we don't like socialism, we want our freedom.”
But the Trump attacks are not without electoral jeopardy. Women vote in larger numbers than men, and Trump could risk alienating voters with personal attacks on an opponent—if Harris is the nominee—that he casually refers to as “nuts.”
Additionally, Harris will also be a formidable opponent on women's reproductive rights—a key issue for Democrats after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision)" href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf__;!!LsXw!XV7djYBWS1WkHY8isS4J0AmCHACMoszkYsgc7UB1-v_6xQ-HepDW-lD_3UgPO_c98SYKdw9BpP9-NYjsFwFyC1OMVX8pzZDQKoTv$">Dobbs decision in 2022 to overturn the landmark Roe v Wade ruling and the subsequent move by Republican states to restrict access to abortion. Just as Republicans are trying to bury the issue—the word abortion)" href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/18/abortion-republican-national-convention/__;!!LsXw!XV7djYBWS1WkHY8isS4J0AmCHACMoszkYsgc7UB1-v_6xQ-HepDW-lD_3UgPO_c98SYKdw9BpP9-NYjsFwFyC1OMVX8pzfVjABkc$">abortion was not mentioned once from the RNC stage—Harris, who has already been campaigning vigorously on this, has the ability to turbo charge this issue.
And at a time when Republicans are attempting to court more voters of color, personal attacks on Harris might well alienate voters that Republicans are trying to attract.
The only certainty is that Trump's attacks will be vicious, relentless and brutal. The new ‘spiritual,’ changed man who would dedicate himself to uniting the nation after his near-death experience in Pennsylvania is long gone.
And the attacks, particularly those focusing on her handling of the border, are likely to get even uglier. Republicans last week linked the Democrats’ border policies to crime and safety with a number of emotive and highly-charged RNC speeches: One of those came from Anne Fundner, a California woman whose 15-year-old son died from a fentanyl overdose in 2022. Fundner described her son's death as “the tragic reality of open borders,” and added, ”I hold Joe Biden and Kamala Harris—the border czar, what a joke—and (California Governor) Gavin Newsom and every Democrat who supports open borders responsible for the death of my son.” (Many studies )" href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-criminol-030421-033048__;!!LsXw!WiKQuSlRBKBmGB_er756adAdl3IfSEUfCSv_H2rBFnNG4XkdWrOe6Nrqlj2qse7Aka_kPeUqT1qv9yEANA3jTVn2zPp5gZE$">studies have found that undocumented immigrants are not more likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born Americans.)
Another came from former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, speaking in Milwaukee as a former Trump rival turned supporter and driving home a message that Trump and others will work to perfect over the coming weeks and months: “Kamala had one job. One job. And that was to fix the border,” she said. “Now imagine her in charge of the entire country.”
