— Donald Trump is trying to crush Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ persona as a force of change and to destroy her personal credibility as a potential president as their still-fresh competition careens into the final nine weeks before Election Day.
In recent days, the ex-president has unveiled a broad assault using the insult-driven politics with which he won power in 2016, even as his advisers have been pleading with him to focus his attention on top voter concerns including high prices and immigration.
He is seizing on foreign tragedies to accuse the vice president of responsibility for the deaths of US troops in Afghanistan and claiming she’s complicit in killings of hostages in Gaza. He and his running mate, JD Vance, implied her mixed race — heritage that millions of Americans share — is evidence of a sinister “chameleon”-like character that also explains policy reversals on energy and immigration. In an ugly moment, he amplified a sexually themed social media slander against her. And his dark campaign ads allege she will slash Social Security benefits by welcoming millions of undocumented migrants to the country.
And in a reprise of past GOP campaigns branding Democratic nominees as extreme liberals, Trump and his supporters are trying to frame Harris as a communist and a “Bolshevik.” South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem blasted Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, as a “security risk” because he once taught in China. And Trump has also started to imply the coming election might not be “free and fair” and said in an interview that aired Sunday that it was ridiculous to indict him for “interfering” in the 2020 election. This and other recent comments raised the specter of another national nightmare if he loses in November and refuses to accept defeat.
Trump’s desperation to find traction has also seen him perform his own policy gyrations on reproductive rights as he seeks to narrow a huge gender gap in polling. But his credibility may already be shattered after he built the conservative Supreme Court majority that overturned the nationwide constitutional right to an abortion. Vance also seems to have a knack for alienating female voters — like when he compared Harris to a nerve-struck Miss Teen USA contestant.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/03/politics/trump-quest-destroy-harris-momentum/index.html