Donald Trump spent two years preparing to run against Joe Biden. The former President’s campaign crafted a surgical strategy aimed at tearing down a specific opponent. But now that Democrats are set to formally nominate Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s team is not throwing away the old playbook.
Throughout this week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Trump’s campaign plans to hold daily press conferences at his local Trump Hotel to puncture the Democrats’ reintroduction of Harris to the nation. Specifically, Trump aides say, they will associate Harris with Biden’s policies—or what they estimate are his biggest vulnerabilities.
“There is a race to tell Americans who don’t know her who she is,” senior Trump adviser Brian Hughes tells TIME. “She owns everything that’s happened in the White House. She’s not a new thing. She’s been in office, advocating for all of these policies.”
On Monday, Senators Rick Scott of Florida and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin held an hour-long event with reporters on the economy, lambasting “Bidenomics” as responsible for the ravages of inflation triggered after the Covid-induced supply chain crisis. The two lawmakers stood at a Trump podium wedged between posters outlining price increases on everything from baked goods and baby food to meat, poultry, and fish.
For the rest of the week, different surrogates will hold daily morning press conferences on Trump’s other core themes: on Tuesday, Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida will focus on crime; on Wednesday, Rep. Mike Waltz of Florida will focus on national security; and on Thursday, the focus will be on immigration, though the Trump campaign has yet to finalize the messenger. “We wanted to make sure at least have a messaging event every day here in Chicago,” says Hughes.
The plan reveals a central Trump campaign strategy with less than three months until the election: tack Harris to Biden as much as possible.
The President, who currently has only a 37% approval rating, was losing to Trump in most polls before he dropped out of the race last month. Since then, Harris swiftly consolidated support among her party’s delegates and engineered a reversal in Trump’s polling momentum. Multiple recent surveys show Harris with at least a 3% edge over Trump nationally, while a New York Times/Siena College poll published over the weekend shows her gaining ground in critical swing states. At the same time, her favorability rating is 10 points higher than Biden’s, according to an AP/NORC survey. Even Trump’s own pollster acknowledges that she’s likely to enjoy a post-convention bump.
Harris has sought to thread a needle between honoring the President under whom she still serves and trying to carve out an identity independent of him. Last week, she rolled out an economic agenda that included expanding the child tax credit, with $6,000 for families with newborns, and implementing a price-gouging ban at grocery stores.
Over the coming week, Democratic stars such as former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are expected to give rousing speeches at the United Center extolling a reborn party with a new standard-bearer. To that end, Trump’s campaign plans to make its counterargument each morning, just a few miles down the road. “She was the co-pilot of the ship for the last three and a half years,” says Hughes.
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