Donald Trump’s jabs at Vice President Kamala Harris aren’t doing him any favors.
The Republican nominee’s campaign appears to be flailing as it struggles to find a compelling line of attack against Harris. Trump spent much of the weekend dragging the former prosecutor as a “low IQ individual” while questioning her racial identity—a strategy that prompted some of his supporters online to plead that he challenge her policy rather than her person.
But the new week has shown no such growth in Trump’s game plan. Speaking on Fox News on Wednesday, Trump baselessly claimed that Harris refuses to do interviews because she can’t answer questions. (Harris has not done a sitdown interview with a network since her whirlwind campaign was announced. The last time she appeared on air was June 24 on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, when she was still defending President Joe Biden’s candidacy.)
But the bulk of Trump’s arsenal continued to be elementary-grade ad hominem attacks against the vice president.
“I heard she’s sort of a nasty person,” the convicted felon told Fox.
"I heard she's sort of a nasty person" -- Trump on Kamala Harris pic.twitter.com/iAnaDNZsCy
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 7, 2024
And the social media arm of Trump’s campaign didn’t seem to have better ammo, either. On Tuesday, the X account Trump’s War Room apparently thought it was cringe that the vice president said “Good evening” at a Philadelphia rally.
In other posts, Trump’s War Room called Harris and her newly minted number two pick, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, “crazy,” and complained that Harris’s crowd chanted “Lock him up”—a twist on a campaign slogan that Trump invented himself in 2016 as a weapon against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Meanwhile, even Trump’s most ardent supporters appear furious with him. Gun rights activist and charged Kenosha, Wisconsin, shooter Kyle Rittenhouse publicly withdrew his support from Trump last week, announcing in a video statement that he felt Trump wasn’t a true champion of the Second Amendment and intended to write in former Representative Ron Paul. (Though less than 12 hours after making the post, Rittenhouse was approached by Trump’s team and subsequently changed his tune.)
Users on Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, got the hashtag “#TrumpIsACoward” trending after the Republican nominee backed out of a prearranged September 10 debate with Harris on ABC News.
And a Morning Consult poll published Monday revealed that voters across the country are turning on Trump. After spending months dismissing Biden as a tired old man, voters are suddenly far more likely to view the 78-year-old Republican nominee as too elderly for the job.
