Former President Donald Trump and his team were caught by surprise when President Joe Biden ended his bid for re-election and threw support behind Vice President Kamala Harris, in part because they had planned a whole campaign on highlighting Biden's age and cognitive fitness.
But there's another reason why they're "terrified" to run against Harris, wrote Amanda Marcotte for Salon. As a former prosecutor, she will turn up the scrutiny on Trump's history of alleged rape and sexual assault.
"Trump enjoys committing pretty much every type of crime, from siccing a murderous mob after his former vice president to epic levels of business fraud, so there's a cornucopia of options for Harris to choose from," wrote Marcotte. "But a Harris ad from the 2020 campaign went viral online for one simple reason: It forefronts his long history of sexually assaulting women."
The ad, which contains the line, "She prosecuted sex predators; he is one," was echoed on Monday by Harris' kickoff campaign speech in Delaware, where she proclaimed, "I took on perpetrators of all kinds. Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. Hear me when I say: I know Donald Trump's type."
Trump wasn't expecting to have to relitigate all that with voters, wrote Marcotte. It's one of his biggest vulnerabilities, and nearly turned the whole GOP against him in 2016 during the "Access Hollywood" tape controversy.
Moreover, she wrote, "It's not just Trump anymore. The entire GOP has leaned hard into toxic masculinity and often overt misogyny. The Republican National Convention was a grotesque display of both. The convention stage was a traffic jam of men who had been violent towards women or made excuses for violence starting with the nominee himself. Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White, who praised Trump as being a master of the 'tough guy business,' had previously been filmed slapping his wife." And his new running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), has attacked women who divorce their husbands after abuse.
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Trump has done all this in the name of shoring up his support with young men — but now it could blow up in his face, she wrote.
"Having a candidate who can talk about this without squirming or tripping over words is especially important in a race where abortion is a central issue," she continued. "Ten states have passed abortion bans that have no exceptions for rape victims. The news is still peppered with stories of underage rape victims being forced to travel out of state or worse, give birth to a rapist's child. The Republican vice presidential nominee wants a national standard of forced childbirth for rape victims. Having a candidate who can speak about the horrors of this in an experienced and concise manner may matter a lot."
And as a prosecutor whose career began on the front lines of these issues, Marcotte concluded, Harris "may be in a better position to push this issue than any other potential Democratic nominee could have been."
Watch the original Harris campaign ad below or at the link here.
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