NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s campaign has spent the last year and a half violently attacking Joe Bidenridiculing their policies, mocking their failures, and relishing a revenge they felt they were winning.
But they also spent weeks preparing for the possibility of Biden leaving the race, preparing a series of attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris that they unleashed as soon as Biden made his statement. stunning announcement Sunday that he would walk away. Biden soon after endorsed Harris, who quickly won support from Democrats to be the party’s nominee.
“Rest assured, we are 100% ready,” Trump pollster and senior adviser Tony Fabrizio said at last week’s Republican National Convention. He noted that speakers at the event frequently referred to the “Biden-Harris” administration in their speeches and said the campaign had prepared anti-Harris videos to be exchanged if Biden left office early.
Still, the move less than four months before Election Day presents new challenges for Trump’s team, which until recently had focused on contrasting the former president’s stamina and mental acuity with Biden’s. Trump will now face a new opponent, yet to be determined, at a time when voters have made it clear they are frustrated with their current choices and desperate for new, younger options.
While Trump aides wanted Biden to stay in the race, they argued that a campaign against Harris — who they believe is the most likely Democratic nominee — wouldn’t be all that different from his run against Biden.
They will try to link her to what they see as the Biden administration’s failures, saying Harris is complicit in everything that occurred under Biden’s watch. This is particularly true when it comes to managing the southern border. Harris was chosen to lead the administration’s response to the border crisis.
In a statement Sunday responding to the news, Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita and fellow campaign manager Susie Wiles criticized Harris, insisting that she “will be even WORSE for the people of our nation than Joe Biden.”
“They have each other’s records and there is no distance between the two,” they said.
They will also continue to accuse her of being part of a cover-up of Biden’s deteriorating health, believing that voters lost trust in Democrats and the press for failing to shine a light on Biden’s weaknesses sooner. And they will attack her record in California, where she served as district attorney and attorney general before being elected to the Senate.
They also made it clear that they plan to continue hammering Biden — still running against him, in some ways — arguing that if he’s not fit to run, then he’s not fit to complete his term and should resign as well.
“Joe Biden cannot exit a campaign for president because he is so mentally incompetent and yet remains in the White House,” LaCivita and Wiles wrote in their memo. “Biden is a national security threat in great cognitive decline and a clear danger to every man, woman and child in our country.
Trump’s campaign tried to urge Biden to stay in the race, including calling Democrats’ efforts to replace him a “coup.”
But they started increasing their attacks on Harris shortly after last month’s debate.
In a post celebrating Independence Day, Trump highlighted Harris on his Truth Social website, calling her a “potential new Democratic challenger” and giving her a tongue-in-cheek new nickname: “Laffin’ Kamala Harris.”
Although Trump publicly insisted that he still believed Biden would be the final candidate, he was captured in an expletive-filled video saying he thought she “would be better” as a rival.
“She is so bad. She’s so pathetic,” he said.
At his rally in Michigan on Saturday night, Trump polled the crowd, asking if they would prefer him to face Biden or Harris. The crowd erupted in applause when Trump mentioned Biden. Harris’ name was met with boos.
He also continued to mock Harris’ laughter and called her “crazy” and “crazy.”
When the news finally arrived, Republicans were ready.
Less than an hour after Biden’s announcement, the Trump campaign was filling its social media channels with clips of previous statements by Harris that could turn off some voters, including one supporting a ban on plastic straws.
Trump’s chief super PAC, Maga Inc., also released a new ad that attempted to blame Harris for Biden’s policies.
“They created the mess. They – no, Kamala – are the owners of this failed album”, says the narrator.
The chaos now engulfing the Democratic Party as it struggles to find a new candidate comes just days after the conclusion of the Republican National Convention, where Republicans rallied around Trump, presenting a united front, after he narrowly survived a an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania. .
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley called the situation unfolding as “a total split screen.”
“We are a completely unified party,” Whatley said in an interview with Fox News Channel, while “Democrats are in free fall.”
Whatley said Republicans would not change their plans despite the Democratic shift.
“President Trump is going to run his race and whether it’s Kamala Harris or anyone else, they’re going to run on the exact same failed agenda that Joe Biden has led for the last four years,” he said.
It remains unclear, however, how a new candidate at the top of the Democratic ticket will change the dynamics of the race.
Polls have shown that Harris’ favorability ratings are similar to those of Trump and Biden. A June AP-NORC poll found that about 4 in 10 Americans have a favorable opinion of her, although the share of those who have an unfavorable opinion was slightly smaller than that of Trump and Biden.
At 59, Harris would represent a stark generational contrast to Trump, who turned 78 last month. She would also be the first woman of color and the first person of South Asian descent to serve as president — a potentially barrier-breaking candidacy that could attract new support from women, minority voters and younger voters.
Trump has a long history of making insulting comments about women and people of color, something Harris is likely to highlight on the debate stage and on the campaign trail.
Harris has also been the Biden administration’s leading voice on abortion rights, a buoyant issue for Democrats since the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Wade, who could again motivate participation this fall.
Faced with the prospect of debating a former prosecutor, Trump on Sunday called for a change of venue to friendlier territory for the next debate, saying it should be moderated by Fox News rather than the previously agreed upon ABC.
Speaking at an event hosted by the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics and The Cook Political Report, Fabrizio, the pollster, said last week that Harris is a pretty undecided vice president.
“The only thing voters know about her is her laugh,” Fabrizio said. “And this has two effects for her.”
Republicans have also suggested the possibility of trying to take legal action to keep Biden on the ballot.
But Edward B. Foley, a law professor who directs the election law center at Ohio State University, said political parties control their nomination processes and any legal challenge by Republicans is unlikely to succeed.
“I just don’t see how the Republican Party or anyone associated with the Republican Party would have any standing to initiate any litigation related to this,” he said. Unlike general elections, in primaries, “voters give their opinion, but they do not control the decision”.
___
Associated Press writer Christina Almeida Cassidy contributed to this report from Atlanta.
