Former Trump adviser Peter Navarro on Monday urged the former president to focus more on contrasting his policy differences with Vice President Harris, rather than launching repeated personal attacks.
“He needs votes, but the way the campaign is currently being run is not focusing enough on the very striking policy differences between him and Kamala Harris that will determine the support of voters in key battleground states,” Navarro said Monday during an appearance on the “War Room” podcast, filling in for host Steve Bannon.
“Instead, when Trump attacks Harris personally rather than on her policies, it increases her swing vote, especially among women, and that’s what’s happening right now,” he added.
Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee in late July and has since strengthened her party base, seeing her approval rating against Trump soar in opinion polls and drawing thousands to rallies in battleground states last week.
She has managed to reduce the lead Trump held when Biden was still campaigning, and a Decision Desk poll tally on Monday showed Biden with a 0.4 percentage point lead over Trump, the official Republican presidential nominee.
A New York Times/Siena College poll released last Saturday showed Harris leading Trump by 4 points in three battleground states — Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — marking a stark change from Biden’s numbers in those same states.
Trump has largely ignored Harris’s surge in popularity, claiming it’s a “honeymoon period” that will eventually end.
During a press conference last week, President Trump criticized Harris as “incompetent” and repeatedly attacked her intelligence.
On Sunday, he accused the Harris-Waltz campaign of using artificial intelligence to fake “massive crowd sizes,” but did not provide any evidence.
Republican pollster Frank Luntz made a similar argument to Navarro over the weekend, suggesting that while Trump has an advantage on issues, his “personality” is part of what has caused the former president’s declining approval ratings.
“In terms of issues, Trump is more likely to be successful. In terms of attributes, Harris is more likely to be successful, because, frankly, people prefer Harris to Trump. If he was watching this right now, his head was going to explode. That’s part of the problem,” Luntz said in an interview on CNN over the weekend.
“Harris is out of touch with the people she needs to be connecting with, and she’s perfectly connected,” Luntz added, pointing to the heightened energy at Harris’ recent rallies.
Navarro was released from federal prison last month after serving a four-month sentence for failing to comply with congressional subpoenas related to the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Mr. Bannon, a former adviser to President Trump, was jailed last month to serve a four-month sentence on two counts of contempt of Congress. Like Mr. Navarro, Mr. Bannon ignored a subpoena from the House committee investigating the January 6 riot.
