Donald Trump's political team has been preparing for weeks to run against Vice President Kamala Harris, which moved a step closer on Sunday after President Joe Biden said he is. leaving the race.
“We're pretty excited that he's endorsed Kamala,” said Richard Grenell, the former US ambassador to Germany and Trump's acting director of national intelligence. “As we know in California, she's never been scrutinized. … Kamala Harris is a product of this whole system. She's far to the left, unresearched and untested.”
There is no guarantee that Harris will replace Biden as the Democratic nominee, but in the hours after Biden announced he was dropping out of the race, he and several other key Democratsincluded potential rivalsendorsed her candidacy, making her even more of a favorite than she already was.
It's what the Trump team and Republicans in general hoped would happen. And they have been prepared.
Last week's Republican National Convention in Milwaukee was full of attacks on Harris, while Trump's speech accepting the nomination was written without direct mentions of Biden; he only mentioned the president. During his 2020 speech accepting the Republican nomination, Biden's name came up more than 40 times.
“Joe Biden is the worst president in the history of the United States by far,” Trump said in one short interview Sunday with NBC News, adding, “We're going to fix what he's done. He should never have been there in the first place.”
Harris, a former senator from California, has said she has yet to “win and win“the Democratic nomination, but she is the only declared candidate and is expected to have considerable progress in the process.
“I think we all knew it was going to happen,” another Trump adviser said.
“It's better that it happened sooner rather than later because we know who we're up against,” the person said. “But my big guess is that it's going to be Harris. I can't imagine they would deny an opportunity to an African-American woman who's already basically been one step away from the heart.”
In the weeks following Biden's disastrous debate performance in late June, Republicans began fine-tuning a messaging strategy that puts a heavy spotlight on Harris with the idea that she would ultimately be the Democratic nominee.
“Donald Trump is going to beat any Democrat who gets the deals cut at the DNC,” said Tim Murtaugh, a top adviser to Trump's 2020 campaign. “They all have to answer for the failures of the Biden administration and the damage done to this country, and they all helped lie to the country about Biden's cognitive decline.”
Early indications point to a three-pronged attack.
Republicans will focus, in large part, on the idea that Harris regularly saw Biden behind the scenes and engaged in what they will frame as a cover-up that shielded the public from his deteriorating state.
“I think they need to drive home the point that Kamala Harris was the No. 1 enabler in the cover-up of President Biden's mental decline,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a Republican strategist and senior adviser to the 2024 campaign. businessman Vivek Ramaswamy. The Trump campaign will press the attack on Harris.
It will also highlight how, early in Biden's tenure, he put Harris in charge of addressing the “fundamental causes” of the wave of migrants making their way north from places like Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. That responsibility led Republicans to dub her the “border czar,” a term that has been increasingly used in recent weeks as the GOP anticipated Harris stepping in for Biden. The term was used in at least seven speeches during the Republican convention and the Republican National Committee quickly post an ad amplifying this political moniker.
“We're not talking about Barack Obama or even Hillary Clinton here,” said Zack Roday, a Republican strategist. “Kamala Harris is, at best, a completely unproven national politician. She owns all of Biden's failures and the cover-up of his decline. Her candidacy is built on a foundation of failures and lies” .
David Bossie, a Maryland representative on the Republican National Committee and an adviser to Trump, emphasized the point that Trump and Republicans see a cover-up of Biden's age and mental acuity.
“Many Democrats and those in the White House press corps owe America an apology,” he said. “This has been a cover-up for years, and Kamala Harris owns it.”
The third point is supported by another argument, arguing that the Democrats pushed Biden out of the race, trampling on the voices of primary voters who had made it clear that Biden was their preferred candidate. While this approach seems on a level sympathetic to Biden, it telegraphs a secondary front in the messaging war. Republicans see these as potentially neutralizing attacks from Democrats who often accuse them of being dangerous to democracy.
“This move shows their elitist mentality and their complete and utter disregard for the voice and will of the American people during the primary election process,” Alabama GOP Chairman John Wahl said in a statement sent by email. “Democratic voters chose Joe Biden as their nominee, and this shameful manipulation of the electoral process is disrespectful to the American people as well as the democratic process.”
Pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. is also expected to quickly updated ads already in circulation in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Nevada with messages focused on “Harris was in on the cover-up,” according to a source familiar with the decision.
“Kamala Harris is less accomplished than Joe Biden, aside from her candidacy-crippling failures, and less likable than Hillary Clinton,” Taylor Budowich, CEO of MAGA Inc., wrote in a text message. “As Democrats navigate this new chaos of their own making, MAGA Inc. will expose their cover-up and the failures they have left our nation suffering.”
Bossie said there is also little space between Harris and Biden's standing on key issues like the economy and immigration and that there will be an effort to tie her to those administration policies that have been generally unpopular, according to most public surveys.
“The Biden-Harris administration is the worst in American history,” he said. “Their policies created carnage on the southern border, created chaos in the economy and an inflation monster. They have the worst record, and you can't put lipstick on a pig.”
Jason Miller, a senior Trump adviser, told NBC News that the campaign is ready for whatever scenario Democrats present.
“We surveyed, we did the research, we cut the ads. We are completely ready to go. This campaign is ready for anything the Democrats throw at us,” he said. “And what really stands out about the Harris-Biden administration is that Kamala Harris owns every failure of the last 3 1/2 years.”
Miller also said they were ready for “anyone else,” but their responses generally focused on Harris.
Biden's historic exit from the race has been just another in a long series of massive ups and downs that have defined the 2024 race.
For much of the spring and early summer, Biden was considered the slight favorite and had what most saw as an easy cash advantage throughout the race. But after Trump was convicted of 34 felonies related to falsifying business records, his political base saw it as an unfair weaponization of the justice system, and a wave of contributions poured into the early-stage campaign. of altering the narrative of the race.
Democrats have tried to focus on Trump's conviction, arguing that it disqualifies him from being a major-party presidential candidate, but the issue has not only failed to dismay Republican voters; has brought them together.
Then came Biden's poor debate performance, which gave more momentum to Trump and the Republicans. And more recently, there was the July 13 rally in Pennsylvania where a would-be assassin's bullet missed Trump's life by inches. The assassination attempt further galvanized Trump supporters leading up to the Republican National Convention.
With Biden on the sidelines, which many in the party expected, some of those dynamics could now be in play for Democrats.
Democrats raised $27.5 million in small-dollar donors in the first five hours after Biden's announcement, according to ActBlue, an online service. wascollection platform who raises money for the Democrats.
“The grassroots supporters are fired up and excited to support her as the Democratic nominee,” the organization said. published on social networks.
Justin Day, a prominent Florida Democratic fundraiser who is raising money for, among others, the Democratic Governors Association this cycle, said he believes the change at the top of the ticket will make some Democratic donors be left aside
“I've already heard from a number of donors who have not been involved in this cycle who have contacted me to say they're all in, regardless of who the nominee ends up being,” said Day, who was finance chairman of Florida for the presidential campaigns. of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. “Focus Has Beat Trump Again.”
Harris has trailed Biden in most public polls against Trump. In the most recent NBC News poll, both Biden and Harris trailed Trump by 2-point margins, which is within the margin of error.
But there is some hope among Democrats that moving on from Biden will relieve them of the problem of having a candidate who is considered too old. Trump is now the oldest major party presidential nominee in history, as well as the first former president to be convicted of a felony.
“You know, he's got felonies, he's got all the responsibilities that are still there,” Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., told NBC News. “Now we have someone with energy, with a connection to my state, someone who can talk about the successes he had.”
Peter Navarro, a Trump White House aide, said Biden's departure should tighten the Trump campaign's efforts to shape the election around policy, specifically immigration, the economy and education, but acknowledged that Democrats could see some blow simply to distance themselves from Biden.
“This was a fact and it was well understood during the Trump campaign weeks ago, and we knew they were going to take it out,” said Navarro, who was released from federal prison days ago after being convicted of contempt of Congress related to in January 6 research.
“I don't think anything will change with this,” he added. “There might be a slight bump just because Biden is so flat.”
Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., a Trump-endorsed Senate candidate, didn't think the changing of the guard in the Democratic Party would make much of a difference, however.
Biden is wrapping up his campaign, Banks said, “it means [Trump] win even more.”
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