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Trump has come to terms with the fact that he is in a different race,” said former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, a close ally | Photo: Bloomberg
By Nancy Cook
Donald Trump’s busiest week of the election campaign coincided with the most politically significant moment for Kamala Harris: The Republican presidential candidate deliberately tried to give his opponent as little of the limelight as possible.
While enthusiastic Democrats gathered in Chicago for their party’s nominating convention, Trump spent the week ramping up his own campaign. His rigorous schedule took him to five swing states, a stop at the U.S.-Mexico border and interviews with major news outlets in as many days. It’s a marked shift for the former president, who previously scheduled one or two public events a week.
The hectically planned week belies Trump’s fears that he has lost the ability to dominate the news cycle the way he did when 81-year-old President Joe Biden was still running for re-election.
“Trump has come to terms with the fact that he is in a different race,” said former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a close Trump ally. “He wants more energy. He wants different ideas.”
His campaign team shifted the fight for the spotlight directly to the Democratic National Convention, holding daily press conferences on the economy, national security and immigration at the Trump Hotel in Chicago, just miles from the arena where Harris officially accepted her party’s nomination as the first black woman and first Asian American to head the ballot.
“President Donald J. Trump spent every moment this week highlighting the issues closest to Americans’ hearts, while Kamala Harris spent the week avoiding her own DNC and refusing to answer questions about her radical left views like abolishing bail,” said campaign spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez.
After the Republican convention in Milwaukee in July, Trump’s team was in top form. Trump had just survived an assassination attempt, and the Democrats were embroiled in an internal dispute over whether to push Biden out of the race. Victory seemed all but certain. Even superstitious aides were discussing which jobs they would like to fill in a second Trump White House.
Change of strategy
Harris’s entry into the presidential race a month ago upended the Trump campaign’s strategy, which had been geared toward attacking Biden’s age and his handling of the economy. Harris, 59, has spent far more time than Biden on large-scale, energetic campaign appearances. And she has worked to distance herself from the president’s economic record, which in many voters’ eyes has been marred by high food and housing costs.
Trump, 78, is frustrated with the state of the campaign and has added several senior advisers to his ranks, including Corey Lewandowski, his first campaign manager in 2016 who coined the phrase “Let Trump be Trump.” He also hired Taylor Budowich, who most recently headed a pro-Trump super action committee, and Tim Murtaugh, a former spokesman for his 2020 campaign.
Lewandowski will operate at the same level as campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, according to a campaign official, both of whom are expected to stay in their roles. He will not oversee staff or campaign spending, but he will be involved in strategy, another ally said. Lewandowski traveled with Trump to Pennsylvania last weekend, suggesting he will enjoy being close to the former president.
The hiring of new staff at the top level could inject even more chaos into a campaign that has so far benefited from little infighting. Trump prefers a decentralized power structure around him, former aides say, even if that often leads to infighting within his inner circle.
“Sometimes a little drama is good when you want to change things,” Gingrich added.
Trump himself emphasized in a post on Truth Social: “The enthusiasm is GREAT and the management team led by Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita is THE BEST. Many people want to join the campaign for the final push.”
Decisive moment
Trump failed in his initial attempts to define Harris, referring to her as “Comrade Kamala,” questioning her ethnic identity and calling her “stupid.” He said he had the “right” to insult Harris, leading to coverage that is likely to alienate women and black voters.
But his attacks that she shies away from the public in front of journalists and that he feels that her campaign team has not presented sufficiently detailed political plans are slowly gaining ground.
Trump is not following his staff’s advice to attack Harris on the economy, inflation and immigration – policy areas where polls show he has a clear advantage over his rival. At rallies this week, he told crowds they were begging him not to insult Harris because she is a woman and to tone down the personal attacks. Trump joked at a rally on Wednesday that he would fire his campaign staff after crowds cheered him to keep up the insults.
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Harris found ways to taunt Trump this week. She held a rally with her running mate, Tim Walz, in Milwaukee, in the same arena where the Republicans held their convention last month, to mock Trump for his ability to draw large crowds. The DNC also has more television viewers than the RNC, according to Nielsen data – a blow to the former president, who often boasts about the size of his audience.
Harris’ entry into the race reinvigorated the Democratic Party, which had previously been largely unenthusiastic as Biden was the expected nominee. Her candidacy has also changed the electoral map, bringing swing states that the Trump team thought they would easily win back into play, including Arizona, Nevada and Georgia.
For Biden, it was “blue wall or bust,” said Chauncey McLean, president of Future Forward, a super PAC supporting the Democrats, referring to the group of states Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
“It’s a pretty nerve-wracking undertaking to have only one path,” McLean said, adding that Democrats are now “ecstatic” because they have multiple ways to win in November.
Trump’s mood has improved over the course of his campaign, and advisers say privately that Harris’ honeymoon will end by Labor Day in early September.
“If you ask voters whether they would rather go back to the Trump economy or stay with the Biden economy, we win by a two-to-one margin,” Trump’s top pollster Tony Fabrizio said in mid-August at a briefing with reporters in Palm Beach, Florida. “The fundamentals of the race have not changed.”
First published: August 24, 2024 | 8:53 am IS
