How Trump Plans to Run Against Harris

Donald Trump crafted his campaign around a specific opponent, unleashing a troll factory to portray President Joe Biden as too old and enfeebled to stay in office. Now, with four months until the election, Trump will run against someone nearly 20 years younger than him.

Since the President’s ruinous debate performance last month, Trump officials have been preparing for this moment, compiling opposition research on Vice President Kamala Harris in case Biden stepped aside. By the time Biden withdrew from the race, Trump’s team and allied groups were already mounting an offensive against Harris, who within 36 hours of Biden dropping out amassed the delegates to become the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Pointing to her political rise in San Francisco, Trump’s camp has tried to paint her as a radical leftist from California, hoping to make her anathema to moderate voters. They began circulating a 2019 GovTrack survey that ranked Harris the most liberal U.S. Senator. Drawing on viral memes, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has encouraged GOP candidates and officeholders to emphasize her idiosyncrasies, such as her love of Venn diagrams. Some MAGA loyalists have mocked Harris—the first Black, Asian, and female Vice President—as a “DEI” candidate, using the initialism for “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs. On his Truth Social platform, Trump recently nicknamed his new rival “Lyin’ Kamala Harris” and called her “dumb as a rock.” 

In some ways, Trump’s camp isn’t starting from scratch. They are planning to pillory Harris for the same policy issues on which Biden was most vulnerable, including inflation and increased border crossings. At the same time, they will try to keep a signature campaign issue alive by blaming her for masking Biden’s diminished mental acuity. “You're still attacking the same record,” says a person close to Trump. “She's complicit in the record. She doesn't get to hide.” 

In other words: the race is on for Trump to set the terms of the matchup. As Biden’s departure didn’t trigger the Democratic infighting many were anticipating, Republicans are plotting to undercut Harris as she reintroduces herself to voters. “It’s always important to define your opponent before they can define themselves,” says Rep. Michael Waltz of Florida, a Trump surrogate. “That's going to be a focus of the campaign.”

For her part, Harris has consolidated the field faster than anyone expected. Within 24 hours, she secured endorsements from Biden, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi. She fended off would-be challengers, including Illinois Gov. J.D. Pritzker, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. She raised a stunning $81 million. Simply put, the Democrats are no longer in disarray. 

Trump and his allies still have plenty of time and resources. His campaign reported nearly $130 million cash on hand last month, and pro-Trump PACs raised more than $430 million between April and June. That was before Trump survived an assassination attempt, which prompted another fundraising surge. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Elon Musk plans to contribute $45 million to a pro-Trump PAC. The upshot is that there will be stockpiles of funds to bolster a candidate with a preternatural ability to take his adversaries down. 

Those dollars have already been deployed. On Sunday afternoon, shortly after Biden’s announcement, a super PAC supporting Trump, MAGA Inc., released an attack ad airing in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona accusing Harris of covering up Biden’s “obvious mental decline” and driving the Administration’s policies. “It's a very easy transition, because she's the person who was hiding his condition from the public,” says Alex Pfeiffer, MAGA Inc.’s communications director. “How can she be trusted?” On Tuesday, the group dropped another ad calling Harris “dangerously liberal.”

Many of Trump’s supporters saw Biden as a weaker challenger compared to Harris. The day before the President bowed out, Trump polled thousands of MAGA rally goers in Michigan, asking who they would prefer him to run against. The crowd booed when he mentioned Harris and cheered when he mentioned “crooked Joe Biden.” 

Privately, Trump’s top lieutenants acknowledge Harris’s candidacy has reshaped the race. For Democrats, she has neutralized a top voter concern that both candidates were too old for a second term. She can spotlight the former President’s role in ending a constitutional right to an abortion by installing three conservative Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. As a former San Francisco District Attorney and California Attorney General, Harris has signaled that she will frame the campaign as a contest between a prosecutor and a convicted felon. “He'll still say it's a partisan witch hunt,” says the person close to Trump.

As much as possible, Trump plans to cast the election as a referendum on Biden. Despite his significant first-term accomplishments—shepherding a post-Covid economic recovery, passing more major legislation than any President since Lyndon Johnson, corralling the west against Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine—Biden remains underwater with voters. Fifty-seven percent of Americans disapprove of his job performance. 

“Joe Biden has been the worst President in my lifetime and Kamala Harris has been right there with him every step of the way,” tweeted Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio. “She owns all of these failures, and she lied for nearly four years about Biden's mental capacity—saddling the nation with a president who can't do the job.”

Still, it’s no longer a Biden-Trump rematch. Most voters had baked in views of each candidate, leaving some pundits to suspect there were few persuadable swing voters left. Harris’s emergence might have changed the equation. 

“So, we are forced to spend time and money on fighting Crooked Joe Biden, he polls badly after having a terrible debate and quits the race,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Now we have to start all over again.”