Harris to begin ‘more aggressive’ post-debate campaigning stage, campaign says
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris’ post-debate campaign visits to North Carolina and Pennsylvania on Thursday and Friday, respectively, represents the start of a “more aggressive” campaigning stage, her campaign said.
Harris is set to hold two rallies in North Carolina and one in Pennsylvania as part of the kickoff for her “New Way Forward Tour,” which her campaign said is an effort to “capitalize on her decisive victory” against former President Donald Trump at the ABC News debate.
The campaign said that Harris had such a “commanding debate performance” that it spent Wednesday going through the footage to pinpoint moments they can use in upcoming ads in the coming days.
This phase will also see the vice president do more media engagements primarily targeting battleground states and other important constituencies, the campaign said, with local media interviews set for the coming days. She will also participate in a discussion with the National Association of Black Journalists next week.
Second gentleman Doug Emhoff, Gov. Tim Walz and Gwen Walz will each hit the road as part of the tour as well.
Emhoff will be in Arizona and Nevada on Thursday; Gov. Walz will be in Michigan on Thursday and Wisconsin on Friday; and Mrs. Walz will be in New Hampshire on Thursday.
The campaign’s new tour will also feature surrogate events, including a Republicans for Harris function in Phoenix, Arizona, an HBCU student event in Savannah, Georgia, and a veterans and military families event in Columbus, Georgia.
(WASHINGTON) — Republicans and Democrats agree: Ohio Sen. JD Vance has had a rocky rollout as former President Donald Trump’s running mate. What’s less clear is how much it matters to voters.
Since Vance was picked to join Trump on Republicans’ ticket, he’s been hit with a cascade of stories about past comments regarding childless women, stringent abortion stances, dislike of police and more. The drip, drip, drip has given Democrats an opening to peg Vance and Republicans at large as “weird,” phrasing that has become a cornerstone of Vice President Kamala Harris’ messaging.
Yet while the remarks are driving a prolonged news cycle, Vance is running in a cycle when his running mate is a former president famous for sucking up political oxygen and his Democratic counterpart will be picked by a likely nominee who herself was chosen as her party’s candidate in an unprecedented series of events.
“It’s hard to say,” one source close to Trump’s campaign said when asked how much voters will care about Vance’s introduction. “I don’t know if a vice presidential candidate ever is the driver of why someone votes for the principal. And so, that is to be determined.”
The conventional wisdom is that running mates historically don’t move the needle with voters in presidential races despite the intense calculus equation done by each presidential candidate to pick the right person. The most recent time a pick threatened a ticket was in 2008, when then-Alaska GOP Gov. Sarah Palin found herself in hot water as John McCain’s running mate, though the two also ran at a time of terrible poll numbers for outgoing President George W. Bush.
Vance was picked after a weekslong search among several contenders, keeping both the media and much of the GOP in suspense as to who will join Trump on Republicans’ ticket.
The Ohio senator was rolled out as the nominee the first day of the GOP convention to much fanfare, and after the confab ended, was immediately hit with headlines over his past comments, many of which focused on his remarks on women without kids, including saying in 2021 that the country was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made.”
The controversy has pushed Vance to play defense, arguing that “the media wants to attack me” and that reporters are too focused on “sarcasm.”
But at the end of the day, it’s still the Trump show, Republicans argued, and support for the GOP ticket likely hinges on his appeal.
“Generally speaking, the vice presidential candidates don’t typically matter too much, especially when you have a candidate on the Republican side like Trump, who is the lightning rod, is the icon. A lot of voters are going to be voting for Trump. I just don’t buy much stock into somebody would have been a Trump voter and is now going to pull off of Trump because of the JD Vance pick,” said GOP pollster Robert Blizzard.
Republicans likened the headlines over Trump’s past comments as inside baseball rather than a campaign earthquake.
“They call him weird and all that stuff, this is rollout stuff. It’s just inside pollster, baseball stuff. When they find out that’s not working, the campaign will have moved on,” said a second source close to Trump’s campaign, arguing that Vance will maintain his appeal to voters in the Rust Belt given his roots in the region.
Trump himself said on Wednesday at the National Association of Black Journalists conference that “you have two or three days where there’s a lot of commotion … and then that dies down.”
The former president’s comments seemed particularly prescient Thursday, when the news cycle was dominated by his questioning during the NABJ interview of Harris’ race — rather than Vance’s comments about childless women.
Beyond that, headlines about Vance are competing with news stories about the Democratic ticket.
Democrats are locked in a whirlwind of their own, with Harris jolting to the top of the ticket after President Joe Biden ended his own campaign. She will soon pick her own running mate, which will likely set off a whole new news cycle.
And that’s on top of other national discussions, including over the recent assassination attempt on Trump.
“It’s just been such a chaotic, turbulent time period that I’m not sure many voters have really homed in and focused on it,” Blizzard said.
In addition to the cavalcade of stories, Vance has still been able to raise money and sell out events on the campaign trail, and print copies of his novel “Hillbilly Elegy” and a movie based off of it have spiked in popularity, suggesting some voters are also digesting a more positive depiction of him.
And through it all, Vance is expected to have the full support of the Trump campaign.
“President Trump is thrilled with the choice he made with Senator Vance to be his running mate, and they are the perfect team to take back the White House,” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
That doesn’t necessarily mean Vance’s introduction on the national ticket has been smooth.
Even those close to the Trump campaign admitted Vance’s rollout hasn’t been ideal, and a 538 average of polls gauging Vance’s popularity found the Ohio Republican’s disapproval rating at almost 38%, while his approval rating sat 6 points under that, at 32%.
“This has been, statistically speaking, the single worst rollout of the last 100 years,” the first source close to the Trump campaign said. “It makes Sarah Palin look like a f—— Mensa candidate.”
That has Democrats sensing an opening.
The universe of undecided voters is small but critical, and it’s unclear what factors could persuade someone still on the fence — particularly if the two people at the top of each ticket remain unpopular.
“Political people who work in politics, I think, are much too dismissive of the impact of a vice presidential pick. Swing voters are extremely low-information, they have often very contradictory views. The notion that they would not decide on who they’re going to vote for based on the second-most important person in the world is, frankly, absurd,” said one source familiar with the Harris campaign’s strategy.
“Political professionals and pundits who dismiss the impact of a vice presidential pick as not possibly factoring into a swing voter’s calculations for who they’re gonna vote for need to watch some focus groups of swing voters.”
Harris’ campaign and its allies are already seizing on the “weird” attack lines. The language is dominating surrogate interviews on cable news, and Vance’s comments are the frequent focus of press releases.
Democrats also said the line of attack layers onto existing messaging over “freedom,” including on abortion and families’ rights to make decisions for themselves.
And if upcoming polling showing the attack sticking, the rhetoric is expected to become a mainstay of the race.
“The Democrats just need to continue bottling up and holding up a mirror to them,” one Democratic pollster said. “Harris and her running mate are going to be speaking about what the polling says is critical to get them to 270” Electoral College votes.
“Keep paying the opposition researchers, is what I would suggest,” the person added. “Because it’s not like he’s only said three controversial things in the last 10 years.”
(WASHINGTON) — On the presidential debate stage, Donald Trump was given an opportunity to acknowledge he lost the 2020 election. He did not take it.
ABC News moderator David Muir read aloud recent quotes from the former president in which he appeared to admit being defeated by President Joe Biden, including last week when he said he “lost by a whisker.”
“I said that?” Trump responded. He went on to say that such remarks were sarcastic and that he did not, in fact, accept his loss.
Trump’s false claims and grievances about the 2020 race have long been a central theme of his third campaign for the White House. But recently, his rhetoric’s escalated to threats to prosecute election workers and attempts to sow doubt on the 2024 outcome before a single vote has been cast.
In a social media post over the weekend, Trump pledged to jail election workers, donors, lawyers and others “involved in unscrupulous behavior” related to voting in the 2024 election if he wins. They’d be prosecuted, he said, under his scrutiny and “at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.”
Election officials and law experts condemned the statement as irresponsible and damaging at a time when public servants charged with overseeing elections face increased threats and harassment.
“The remarks are despicable and dangerous,” Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, told ABC News.
“The continued claims of cheating are unsupported by any reliable evidence — but they will cause millions of people to continue to believe the false claims that U.S. elections are rigged,” Hasen said. “After Jan. 6, 2021, a responsible person would be more circumspect with rhetoric about elections and cheating. Donald Trump is doubling down.”
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat whose state was an epicenter of false claims of fraud in 2020, similarly worried about the impact of Trump’s statements.
“It makes me concerned that this will set other people off. I think the one thing that we’ve seen before is that words have consequences and meaning,” Fontes told ABC News. “And while we are concerned, we are also prepared. Elections officials across the country have been working with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to monitor and track threats, to make sure we’re keeping our voters safe and make sure we’re keeping our elections officials safe.”
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat who experienced protests at her home after Trump’s 2020 loss, said her duty is to “rise above the noise and continue to ensure our elections are fair, secure, accessible, and that the results are accurate.”
The Pennsylvania Department of State, noting it conducts two audits after every election, told ABC News it was “confident in the integrity of county officials and election administrators across the Commonwealth, despite irresponsible statements that are not based in fact or supported by evidence.”
Several secretaries of state, including Benson and Fontes, were on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to testify on their 2024 election preparations.
Asked for comment on the concern from officials, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said, “President Trump believes anyone who breaks the law should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, including criminals who engage in election fraud. Without free and fair elections, you can’t have a country. Ask Venezuela.”
Trump’s allegations of fraud in the 2020 election were debunked by his own administration officials. Dozens of legal challenges brought by his campaign or his allies in battleground states failed in the courts.
But the impact of the efforts to overturn results were tangible on election officials and poll workers.
Lawrence Norden, vice president of elections and government at the Brennan Center for Justice, earlier this year reported a survey of local election officials across the U.S. found 38% reported experiencing threats, harassment or abuse. Fifty-four percent said they were concerned about the safety of their colleagues. In some cases, Norden said, offices reported installing bullet proof glass or provided extra security training to staff. Some have left their positions altogether.
Norden said it was “very frustrating” to see Trump’s comments after the steps taken by election workers to bring down the temperature these past four years, including efforts to combat misinformation and to improve transparency.
“Any political leader, and certainly somebody running for president of the United States, implying that election officials could be prosecuted is potentially doing two things,” he said. “It’s not going to change the behavior of any election worker or election official, but it’s potentially encouraging further threats or violence, and it is laying the groundwork to potentially undermine or question election results that you don’t like later on.”
In addition to his threat to prosecute election workers, Trump has repeatedly accused Democrats of staging a “coup” in nominating Vice President Kamala Harris after Biden dropped out of the race. He’s sent mixed messaging on voting methods, at times encouraging his supporters to vote in any way possible and at other times baselessly claiming mail-in ballots are ripe for abuse, despite using a mail ballot in Florida’s 2020 primary. He’s said a focus of his campaign is to make sure Democrats don’t “cheat.”
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When asked during the CNN debate in June if he would commit to accepting the November outcome, he only said: “If it’s a fair and legal and good election, absolutely.”
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump says he has agreed to an offer from ABC News to debate Vice President Kamala Harris on Sept. 10.
Trump said so during a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago Club on Thursday.
“I look forward to the debates because I think we have to set the record straight,” he said.
Harris also confirmed her participation in the debate and told reporters Thursday evening that she’s looking forward to the matchup.
“Well, I’m glad that he finally agreed to a debate on Sept. 10. I’m looking forward to it and I hope he shows up,” she told reporters on a tarmac in Detroit.
Trump previously said he had been willing to go toe-to-toe with President Joe Biden and agreed to ABC’s first invitation issued in May.
However, after Biden dropped out of the race last month and Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, Trump had implied he would not debate Harris on ABC.
Harris has accused Trump of “running scared” and trying to back out of the debate.