NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s campaign has spent the last year-and-a-half viciously attacking Joe Biden, ridiculing his policies, mocking his fumbles and…
— Donald Trump’s campaign has spent the last year-and-a-half viciously attacking Joe Biden, ridiculing his policies, mocking his fumbles and relishing a rematch they felt they were winning.
But they have also spent weeks preparing for the possibility that Biden might exit the race, readying a bevy of attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris that they unleashed as soon as Biden made his stunning announcement Sunday that he would step aside. Biden soon after endorsed Harris, who was quickly winning 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 speakers at the event often referred to the “Biden-Harris” administration in their speeches and said the campaign had prepared anti-Harris videos to swap in just in case Biden stepped down sooner.
Still, the shakeup less than four months before Election Day lays out new challenges for Trump’s team, which had until recently been focused on contrasting the former president’s vigor and mental acuity with Biden’s. Trump will now face a new, yet-to-be-determined opponent at a time when voters have made clear that they are frustrated by their current choices and desperate for new, younger options.
Though Trump aides had wanted Biden to remain in the race, they have argued a campaign against Harris — who they believe is the most likely Democratic nominee — wouldn’t be all that different from their race against Biden.
They will try to tie her to what they see as the Biden administration’s failures, saying Harris is complicit in everything that occurred under Biden’s watch. That’s particularly true when it comes to the handling of the Southern border. Harris had been tapped 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 chief Susie Wiles railed against Harris, insisting she “will be even WORSE for the people of our Nation than Joe Biden.”
“They own 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 coverup of Biden’s deteriorating health, believing voters have lost trust in Democrats and the press for failing to shed 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.
