A clearly disgusted Jeremy Peters from the New York Times trashed Donald Trump's brain trust on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" for sending him out to the National Association of Black Journalists' interview in Chicago on Thursday with no cogent plan of attack.
Reflecting on the way the abrasive Trump comported himself under questioning — which has led to criticism from Democrats and conservatives alike — Peters told the MSNBC panel that is it evident the Trump campaign is "flailing" as it looks for an angle to take on Harris who has experienced an explosive burst of support since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.
As he explained, if Trump's inner circle thought attacking Harris over her race would be a winner with the public, they were sadly mistaken.
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Asked what the Trump campaign's strategy appears to be, Peters told the hosts, "I think they're flailing around. They have not landed on any effective critique of her. It's 'laughing Kamala, crazy Kamala, crooked Kamala.' Trump is kind of casting about for an attack line that works, something he's been very effective at doing with his other opponents, but they can't land on one. They don't know how to go after her. "
"I think what Vice President Harris has done by responding the way she did is to very effectively draw the contrast that Biden couldn't with Trump," he continued. "She's saying, you know, 'same old show.' It's no accident she used the word old, right?"
"She's reminding people that this is something that we've all seen before from Donald Trump – it's kind of like a tired sequel to the original," he elaborated. "He is going back to the same playbook, saying, you know, questioning her background, that somehow this is, like, a conspiracy theory, that he'd like to be as powerful as birtherism was in 2016. I don't know about that."
"As far as conspiracy theories go, this is a pretty weak one," he pointed out. "I think it sounded like it was something very compulsive, that came out of his mouth at the time. I had never heard this before, maybe I'm wrong. I never actually heard anybody questioning Vice President Harris's background the way there were dark conspiracy theories around[ex-President Barack] Obama. I think this was just a, you know, an attempt to land a hit on her, and he missed."
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