The upheaval in the presidential election has rattled former President Trump’s once-disciplined campaign and put the Republican candidate on the defensive for the first time in months.
Trump handily won the Republican primary, successfully turned even negative headlines about his legal troubles into campaign and fundraising fodder, and consistently led President Biden in the polls as Biden struggled to break through or energize his own base.
But that has changed in the short time since Biden withdrew from the running and Vice President Harris was elevated to the top of the list of candidates.
Harris has enthralled Democrats and significantly closed the gap in the polls, but Trump has also sparked backlash by criticizing her race, intelligence and the way she laughs.
“He’s like a frustrated poker player who lost, angry and panicked and making endless mistakes. After gloating for weeks as if he’d already won the election, he now finds himself facing a huge enthusiasm gap with passionate Democrats,” said Mike Nellis, Democratic strategist and founder of Authentic Campaigns.
“It’s easy to restrain yourself when your opponent’s campaign is on fire,” Nellis said. “It’s harder to do that when your opponent’s campaign is on fire. I’ve seen it happen a thousand times.”
Trump’s 2024 campaign has largely avoided the kind of infighting and self-created controversy that so often plagued his 2016 election, his four years in office and his 2020 presidential runoff. His campaign leaders, Chris LaCivita and Suzie Wiles, were praised by Republicans as Trump won the primary and was considered the favorite to beat Biden in November’s presidential election.
But Trump has stirred controversy with his comments over the past week, which Democrats say reflect concerns about the escalating election campaign.
Trump told a gathering of conservative Christians over the weekend that there would be no need to vote again in four years, urging them to vote in November. He had a chance on Monday to clarify what he meant, but did little to address the backlash from people who argued he was suggesting there would be no more elections.
Trump was in Chicago on Wednesday to attend the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) convention, where he clashed with ABC News correspondent Rachel Scott and sparked a heated debate by falsely questioning Harris’ mixed race ancestry.
“I didn’t know she was black until a few years ago when she happened to be black, and now she wants to be known as black,” Trump said.
The former president has also made it a point to attack Harris’ intellect in recent public comments, claiming that she struggled to pass the bar exam and, in an interview with Fox Business Network that aired Friday, repeatedly calling Harris “not a smart person.”
Caroline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, said in a statement that race and gender “have absolutely no bearing on why Kamala Harris is the most unpopular Vice President in history.”
“From his duplicity on fracking to his lies about his role as Biden’s failed border chief, President Trump is shining a light on Kamala and her campaign’s attempts to rewrite history,” Leavitt said. “If they’re brazen enough to lie to the American people about things that are easy to disprove, what else are they lying about?”
The campaign itself has focused on attacking Harris over immigration and the southern border, and this week launched an attack ad describing the vice president as “failed, weak and dangerously liberal.”
And Republicans argue these issues are to their advantage: Polls show voters trust Trump on immigration and the economy, two issues that consistently rank at or near the top in surveys of voter concerns.
The question is whether Trump can stay focused on the issues without descending into personal attacks that remind independents and moderate voters why they don’t want to support him.
“There’s no question he can do that,” former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer said. “If you look at the last few elections, he’s attacked candidates in his own way, in the primaries and in the general election, and he’s been largely successful.”
“At the end of the day, what people need to remember is this,” Spicer said. “He did it his way and he was successful.”
At a rally in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, Trump criticized Harris for reversing course on several issues, including banning fracking, supporting Medicare for All and overhauling the police budget.
But he also stressed the difficulty of staying focused on policy, at one point joking that his speechwriters “bored me” and asking the audience if they were OK with him going off script.
“I tend to rant about 75 percent of the time,” Trump joked.
