Donald Trump's decision to sit down for an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists where he created a firestorm by questioning the racial background of Vice President Kamala Harris has created yet another headache for the Republican party.
Already reeling from the fallout of Trump running mate Sen. J.D. Vance's attacks on "childless cat ladies" and labeling couples without children as "sociopaths," GOP strategists are raising alarms that the top members of the 2024 ticket are doing irreparable damage to their already close election prospects.
In a report from Politico, Natalie Allison and Alex Isenstadt write that the controversial comments from the presidential and vice presidential nominees are creating "a divide on the right" already unnerved about how the election will turn out — particularly in light of Harris' surge in the polls.
Trump's truncated interview in Chicago where he was pulled off the stage by his staff after aggressively questioning whether Harris is Black, set off alarms late Wednesday, with Chuck Coughlin, an Arizona-based political strategist, lamenting, "They don’t have a narrative that they’re comfortable with about how to take down Harris. He’s grasping around. I think he’s desperately grasping around with his instincts. I don’t think his team has any way to put their handle on this, and so he’s instinctually grasping around for what to say.”
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According to the report, the Trump campaign had just started hammering Harris on the Biden administration's handling of the border crisis in hopes of drowning out questions over Vance's viability as a running mate and the millions spent on that campaign may have been wasted as attention shifted to Trump's outrageous accusations.
Noting "Trump’s comments Wednesday on Harris’ racial background drew some of the biggest gasps from the audience, and provided Democrats with ammunition," the Politico report added, "The former president has a long history of making incendiary remarks, and some party strategists suspect it is a reflection of his impulse to draw attention to himself when it is not on him — even when the resulting headlines are negative."
According to Allie Beth Stuckey, a conservative podcast host, “Kamala Harris might deserve name calling, but doing so will only garner her sympathy.”
John Fredericks, a Trump-backing conservative radio host, also questioned what is going on with the ex-president's campaign, admitting, "...personal attacks against Kamala Harris are really ill-advised and ill-placed, and have no upside in this campaign.”
“When you’ve got all the issues, you’ve got everything working to your favor, why are you going to use personal attacks? They don’t work against Trump, and they’re not going to work against her,” Fredericks complained.
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