Donald Trump appeared in the battleground state of North Carolina to deliver an important speech on the economy—and one of his trademark rants broke out.
But amid the insults, criticisms, anger, and lies, the former president made a misstep by executing what he had been seeking for days: a strategy to confront Vice President Kamala Harris.
The former president took the stage on Wednesday as Republican commentators awaited signs that he had regained his footing after more than three weeks of anger and confusion following President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 race.
Anyone hoping for an elusive change from Trump would be disappointed, as they have been time and again, when he referred to Harris as “crazy” and “not smart,” while mocking her laughter with sexist jabs and ramping up pressure in his incendiary immigration policy.
Trump's unchecked bitterness about no longer running against Biden overshadowed the speech's headlines, which his campaign viewed as a serious exercise dedicated to the economy—the issue voters care about most.
However, his remarks, at least in their scripted version, offered the first signs that Trump’s campaign was beginning to stabilize around a coherent, albeit extreme and divisive, plan to respond to a new foe in the general election. As a result, the event previewed how the race to Election Day would unfold following next week’s Democratic National Convention.
Trump’s plan to slow Harris could end up harming him.
The new approach, if Trump ever mustered the discipline to execute it in a focused way, is deeply personal and designed to destroy the notion that Harris, the second woman to lead a major party presidential ticket, is qualified to serve. It includes blaming her for the inflation and high food prices that have plagued the Biden administration, under the new moniker of “Kamalanomics.”
With Harris expected to unveil her own economic plan on Friday, Trump’s team also aims to thwart any efforts by the vice president to position her candidacy as a fresh start for economic policy. Trump is ramping up efforts to depict Harris as a far-left extremist—a strategy that has sometimes worked for past Republican presidential campaigns—at a time when conservative media are comparing her to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
Trump is also portraying Harris as a flip-flopper, who has abandoned previous positions on energy and healthcare but would revert to what he calls her radical past if elected. This is an attempt to undermine public trust in the new Democratic candidate, based on his earlier skepticism about her self-identifying as a Black woman, as well as a South Asian American. According to Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance, Harris is a “chameleon” changing her political and racial identity to suit her power ambitions.
The former president is also doubling down on the politics of fear, creating what he claims would be disasters at home and abroad if Harris were president—from World War III to a Great Depression. Mixing his dystopian vision of immigration and crime, Trump is tapping into the insecurities of Americans struggling to achieve a decent living and those who might worry that U.S. adversaries like China and Russia are on the rise.
But the question for Trump as Harris rises is how much he has harmed himself with his rants and false claims that Biden’s successor on the Democratic ticket represents a kind of coup. New polls show how dramatically Harris has changed the election. The vice president has ignited a surge of enthusiasm in a party that was demoralized just three weeks ago. And she is repairing the fractures in the Democratic coalition that threaten to undermine Biden's hopes for a second term, especially among minority and younger voters.
Trump’s approach, reflecting his fiery temperament and intense personal style, seems an odd way to win over suburban, female, and moderate voters in battleground states, many of whom criticized the results in November when Harris brought the race back into balance.
Trump's crude attacks could deeply alienate some female voters.
For instance, on Wednesday, Trump mocked Harris’s laughter again—using it to suggest she is unfit for the presidency. “What’s happened to her laugh? I haven’t heard that laugh in about a week,” he said. “That’s why they don’t let her on stage,” he added, calling her laughter “the laugh of a lunatic” and “career-threatening.”
And throughout most of Trump’s speech on Wednesday, he seemed to be playing to his base supporters who admire him more than trying to attract a more moderate voter group. Indeed, he even ridiculed the idea of giving a serious address—perhaps annoying some former Republican officials like ex-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Trump’s former main challenger, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who have pleaded with him to focus.
“Today is a little different day, this isn’t a rally,” Trump told his crowd. “They want an economic speech so we’re doing this as an intellectual speech. Today, you all are intellectuals.”
How Trump will try to slow Harris’s momentum
While his frequent digressions diminished the impact of any direct attacks on Harris, Trump’s remarks on Wednesday represent his most expansive effort yet to try to neutralize her threat. And they are likely to be quickly picked up by his conservative media supporters as the campaign against Harris ramps up.
— Trump announced that he intends to diminish Harris’s record, intellect, and character. “She’s not a smart person. She’s not very smart, but isn’t that crazy? Isn’t that crazy? She was disrespected so much just a few weeks ago, and now it’s like Kamala, Kamala!” he said.
— The former president also targeted Harris as a far-left figure, somehow alien to the politics of most Americans. “On November 6, she will be back to being a liberal in San Francisco, destroying everything in sight,” he said.
— Trump is looking to thwart any efforts by Harris to distinguish herself from the Biden administration’s policies. “Kamala has claimed that addressing inflation will be her top priority on day one. But day one for Kamala was three and a half years ago. Why hasn’t she done that?” he said. “By the way, they are a team—she’s trying to throw him overboard… no, no, they are a team.”
— Central to this effort is a direct attempt to blame Harris for the economic struggles many working Americans are facing. “Is anyone here feeling wealthier under Kamala Harris (and) Joe the liar than you were under the Trump administration? Is there anything that’s less expensive under Kamala Harris and Joe the liar?” Trump said. And returning to personal attacks, he promised not to “let this incompetent socialist lunatic destroy our economy for another four years.”
— This campaign argues that Harris would revert to her previous policies after having abandoned them, for example, by banning fracking or seeking a single-payer healthcare system. “For every stance that Kamala is now falsely taking… Kamala actually said the opposite,” Trump claimed.
— Republicans have labeled Harris as the “border czar” since she was assigned by Biden to address some social and financial conditions in Central American countries that are the root causes of the migration surge. This will be the focus of the new effort to undermine the Democratic candidate. “The migrants that Harris lets in are raping our women and hurting our children, and now Kamala wants to let them loot Social Security,” Trump falsely claimed.
The former president seems more interested in the offensive jabs at his opponent than in the details of his own economic policy. But when he laid out plans for tax cuts, hefty tariffs, and regulatory rollbacks, he made himself an easy target for Harris’s campaign.
“Trump has no plan, no vision, and no real interest in helping build the middle class,” the campaign said in a statement. It also pointed out the contrast between the two “very different” economic agendas that voters will choose from in November: “A plan to build the middle class versus a plan to help billionaires and big corporations at the expense of working families.”
Many Republicans believe that voters’ frustration over rising prices in recent years gives Trump a priceless opportunity to reclaim the presidency. But his antics on Wednesday showed he is fully capable of squandering that chance.
