Harris could present a new challenge to Netanyahu: From the Department of Politics

Welcome to the online version of From the Policy Deska nightly newsletter that brings you the latest reporting and analysis from the NBC News politics team on the campaign, the White House and Capitol Hill.

In today’s edition, Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell explores the new dynamic between Vice President Kamala Harris and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Plus, we’ll look at how JD Vance spent his first full week as Donald Trump’s defense running mate.

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Harris could pose a new challenge to Netanyahu

By Andrea Mitchell

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to Washington hoping for a platform for his Gaza policy.

Instead, he found that all the attention in the US was focused on President Joe Biden’s decision to end his campaign – and on the new Democratic front-runner, Vice President Kamala Harris, who has put more emphasis on Israel’s conduct of war. and its devastating impact on civilians. than Biden, at least until recently.

And when the Israeli leader arrived at the White House for an Oval Office meeting he had been seeking for more than three years, the price was a second session to hear the grievances of the hostage American families. They had previously called his visit “political theater,” saying he should have stayed in Israel to focus on getting his loved ones home.

The wily Israeli politician may also have gone too far in publicly trying to tip the balance of the US elections. After maneuvering to be invited by the Republican speaker of the House to give a speech to Congress — an unprecedented quarter by a foreign head of state — he made a side trip to Mar-a-Lago on Friday and sat calmly in a televised photo opportunity while Trump called Harris a “radical left person” and a “destroyer,” adding that he didn’t know how a Jewish person could vote for her.

Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, is Jewish and has given speeches across the US condemning the rise in anti-Semitism. Netanyahu also did not object when his far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir supported former President Donald Trump’s candidacy this week, a breach of protocol.

As for Harris, who had only met Netanyahu once, when she visited Israel as a senator in 2017, she showed her own political toughness in their first face-to-face confrontation. After the meeting, Harris – not his Israeli visitor – delivered remarks, providing a scathing summary of their talks. She went on television to declare her commitment to the defense of Israel, but emphasized that the war needed to end due to the catastrophic impact on the civilian population. Later, a senior Israeli official anonymously criticized the vice president to reporters, accusing her of overemphasizing the importance of ending the war.

But in the end, Netanyahu may have been outdone by a rare American politician he barely knew. Harris’s approach to balancing military objectives versus hostage rescue is more in tune with public opinion in the US and Israel than that of the veteran Israeli leader.

Vance spends his first week on the GOP ticket playing defense

By Matt Dixon, Henry J. Gomez, Allan Smith and Garrett Haake

Senator JD Vance didn’t have much of a honeymoon.

In his first week of campaigning as Trump’s running mate, the Ohio Republican had to compete for attention with an upset on the Democratic ticket.

Much of the buzz surrounding Vance ranged from disturbing to unflattering. Progressives attacked his nearly 3-year-old comments about “hot women without kids” — a criticism he extended to Harris, a stepmother of two. Pundits focused on polling data that suggested many voters were still not convinced of Vance. Others engaged in largely unfounded speculation about whether Trump already regretted his choice for vice president.

Meanwhile, left-wing activists and internet personalities have criticized Vance on social media, mostly ignoring Trump in the process. And Harris’s fledgling White House campaign has kept a particularly sharp focus on the No. 2 candidate on the Republican ticket. The headline of a campaign press release Friday attacked Vance for his anti-abortion views and declared him an “outsider.”

Candidate launches and nominating conventions are two of the best opportunities for a presidential campaign to gain an abundance of positive news coverage as well as a rebound with voters. A poll shortly after Biden picked Harris as his 2020 running mate, for example, found that the majority of voters approved the selectiongiving your campaign a boost.

But one New York Times/Siena Survey of registered voters after last week’s Republican National Convention found that 38% of those polled — a plurality — had a somewhat or very unfavorable view of Vance. Early reviews were more positive in 2016 for Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence, who got a favorable net rating in a Gallup poll at the time.

One Republican strategist, speaking on condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment, said Vance risks violating the basic requirement of a running mate: “The No. 1 rule of being vice president is do no harm.”

“We’re going from Double-A baseball to the major leagues,” the strategist added. “There is an adaptation period. Some people can handle it and some people can’t.”

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