Former President Donald J. Trump called into “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday morning for his first interview since Vice President Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.
“Tell me how you're going to handle this issue in your campaign,” Fox's affable host Ainsley Earhardt told the former president. “Are you going to focus on how they voted in the past?”
It was more of a plea than a question.
“Yes,” Trump assured her. “I plan to do that.”
From the Republican perspective, it shouldn't be hard for Trump to pivot from President Biden to the new Democratic candidate. All he has to do is harshly criticize Harris and Waltz and portray them as out of touch with most Americans on everything from policing to immigration to transgender policy.
But lately, Trump has continued to get embroiled in confusion of his own making, making unnecessary comments about Harris's mixed-race identity, sparring with Republicans and fantasizing that Biden might somehow reclaim the nomination.
Many in Trump's party believe all of this is counterproductive, to say the least.
“The Harris-Waltz pairing is the most left-leaning pairing in American history. It's a rich environment for attack,” said right-wing media warrior Ben Shapiro. “What the president needs to do is focus his attacks, throw his money at this extremist pairing and stick to the simple argument that 2019 was better than 2024.”
Trump began to stray from his message a week ago, when he questioned Harris' identity as a black woman in front of a room of black journalists at a conference in Chicago. “Trump is better at character attacks than issue-based attacks,” said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster. “But given Kamala's relative obscurity, policy and issue-related attacks will likely have more traction now.”
The message discipline issue was exacerbated at a rally in Atlanta on Saturday, where Trump repeatedly attacked the state's popular Republican governor, Brian Kemp, for not going along with the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. “It was sad to see brothers from the same family arguing,” said Jack Kingston, a former House Republican from Georgia and a Trump ally.
At times, Trump has appeared hesitant to accept a new political reality: that he is no longer competing with Biden. On Tuesday, in a Truth Social post, Trump wondered aloud whether Biden might “storm the Democratic National Convention and try to reclaim the nomination.”
“He's been preparing for four years to run against Joe Biden,” Newhouse said. “Obviously, it's going to be a tough bounce back.” Trump is now “jumping back on his feet with less than 100 days to go, and it's a very difficult undertaking,” he said.
“We have defined Kamala Harris as a failure, weak and dangerously liberal,” Trump's campaign countered, according to Trump spokesman Steven Chang. “In numerous interviews and speeches, President Trump has drawn a clear contrast between Harris' disastrous policies and his own successful America First policies. Meanwhile, Kamala has avoided media interviews and refused to engage substantively with the press for more than 17 days since Biden withdrew.”
Harris has not given a formal interview to the press since becoming party leader.
Further adding to the impression that Trump is struggling, this week he tried out a new, mocking nickname for his opponent, Harris, calling her “Kamabra” — a far cry from a moniker he used previously (“Ruffin' Kamala”) and no one seems to really understand what it means.
When asked what Trump meant by “Kamabra,” Kingston replied, “I don't know,” and when asked about attacks on her racial identity, she said, “I'm going to stick to the price of groceries.”
“All Trump needs to do is state his position like he did in 2016,” said Ann Coulter, a conservative commentator who broke with Trump several years ago. The main reason is that Trump can't focus on the issues he cares about. “But he's going to spend the first 20 minutes of every rally attacking the popular Republican governor of Georgia and giving Kamala a ridiculous nickname.”
“Republicans who expected Trump to run a smart and disciplined campaign will be sorely disappointed,” Coulter added.
