Trump and his allies had a plan for how to hit Harris. Then he opened his mouth.
Scrambling to put an end to Kamala Harris’ ascent, Donald Trump’s campaign and outside allies came up with a plan: Hit her on immigration, her record as a “liberal prosecutor” and as a “radical.”
It didn’t last long.
During a 34-minute question-and-answer appearance before the National Association of Black Journalists, Trump questioned Harris’ Black identity. He said he would pardon violent Jan. 6 rioters, and he didn’t directly answer when asked if his vice presidential pick, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, would be ready to assume the presidency.
The exchanges overshadowed the attacks his political operation has made against Harris in recent days, while Trump still seems to be searching for an effective message to damage her.
“They don’t have a narrative that they’re comfortable with about how to take down Harris,” said Chuck Coughlin, an Arizona-based political strategist. “He’s grasping around. I think he’s desperately grasping around with his instincts. I don’t think his team has any way to put their handle on this, and so he’s instinctually grasping around for what to say.”
The Trump machine had in recent days begun a multi-million-dollar TV advertising blitz hammering Harris for her record on the border, an issue the former president’s campaign sees as a winner — and portraying her as ideologically out of the mainstream. One ad from a pro-Trump group labeled the vice president a “dangerous San Francisco liberal.”
Harris had even begun defending herself from the attacks, hitting back Tuesday night in Atlanta about her border record, and simultaneously releasing a nearly minute-long video framing her as pro-border security.
But Trump’s comments Wednesday on Harris’ racial background drew some of the biggest gasps from the audience, and provided Democrats with ammunition. During the appearance, Trump said Harris “happen[ed] to turn Black … She was Indian all the way and all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a Black woman.”
The White House immediately seized on the remarks, with White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre calling them “repulsive” and “insulting.”
After the panel interview — and despite the pushback — Trump and his campaign leaned into the messaging about Harris’ racial identity. Before his rally Wednesday night in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the campaign flashed on screen a graphic of Harris laughing, with a screenshot of a news headline referring to her as “Indian-American.” His attorney, Alina Habba, appeared to intentionally mispronounce Harris’ first name when she said “unlike you, Kamala, I know who my roots are. I know where I come from.”
Whether Trump’s performance on Wednesday will ultimately impact his prospects in the race is not clear. The former president has a long history of making incendiary remarks, and some party strategists suspect it is a reflection of his impulse to draw attention to himself when it is not on him — even when the resulting headlines are negative. In recent days, much of the focus of the media has been on Harris and on controversy surrounding Vance, who has drawn scrutiny for his criticisms of “childless cat ladies,” among other comments.
“The media is going to go into overdrive over the next 24 hours of all the ‘bombshells’ from this interview, as it has every other time Trump the matador waves the red cape and the media follows,” said Doug Heye, a former Republican National Committee spokesperson. “Meanwhile, the conversation today and tomorrow will not be on cat ladies or coconuts, etc. but back on Trump. Where he wants it.”
Still, Trump’s eruption Wednesday was hardly a one-off. And in the days since Harris became his opponent, Republicans have struggled to navigate issues of race. Several congressional Republicans have referred to Harris as a “DEI hire” or “DEI vice president,” suggesting she was merely in her role because of her race, and not due to her qualifications for the job. The party has also veered into attacks on Harris’s gender.
For his part, Trump over the last week has called the vice president “crazy” and “nuts.” Earlier this week, Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy got into an on-air tussle with Fox News host Neil Cavuto after calling Harris a “ding dong.” The senator defended his choice of attack after Cavuto questioned whether that type of language could turn off some voters from Trump.
Some in the party, however, have begun to push back, creating a divide on the right not only about whether they should invoke Harris’ race — but also about how to speak about women more broadly. House Speaker Mike Johnson has cautioned conservatives against leveling attacks on Harris related to her race and gender. And on Wednesday, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley told reporters that Republicans should not mock women who choose not to have children, as Vance has recently taken criticism for doing.
Allie Beth Stuckey, a conservative millennial podcast host and commentator, over the last week had warned listeners that making “DEI hire/cackle” jokes about Harris could be off-putting for young women voters who may otherwise lean conservative. She urged Republicans to “hit her with the policy” instead of personal insults.
“Kamala Harris might deserve name calling,” Stuckey said this week, “but doing so will only garner her sympathy.”
Trump himself during Wednesday’s panel declined to answer whether it was acceptable for his supporters to refer to Harris as a beneficiary of “DEI” policies. After asking the questioner to define the term, Trump then went on to make his claim that he initially “didn’t know she was Black.”
John Fredericks, a Trump-aligned conservative radio host, told POLITICO on Monday that the “personal attacks against Kamala Harris are really ill-advised and ill-placed, and have no upside in this campaign,” saying some Republicans’ recent DEI references were “stupid.”
“Certainly on the air, I’m not doing it,” Fredericks said. “All you’ve got to do is focus on the issues. Here’s a candidate that ran for president in 2020, and got beat by the fortune teller Marianne Williamson.”
Harris dropped out of the 2020 Democratic primary in early December 2019, before Williamson — who also ended her campaign before the Iowa caucuses.
“When you’ve got all the issues, you’ve got everything working to your favor, why are you going to use personal attacks?” Fredericks said. “They don’t work against Trump, and they’re not going to work against her.”
Since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris at the top of the ticket a week and a half ago, Trump has been on his heels — and his team has thrown out several variations of messaging in an apparent attempt to test strategies. Within the same press releases, the Trump campaign has simultaneously called Harris “weak” and “dangerously liberal,” and said the border crisis under her watch was due to “incompetence,” but was also “by design.”
And while Vance has been forced to weather his own series of negative news cycles of past comments about women, Vance had embraced a specific role on the campaign as a policy attack dog against Harris.
Despite the consternation by some Republicans over Trump’s personal attacks on Harris, Trump has a long history of making offensive and, at times, sexist comments about women. He won the 2016 presidential election after doing so — an election in which he not only lobbed attacks like “nasty woman” at his opponent Hillary Clinton, but also came under fire for comments made about conservative journalist Megyn Kelly, GOP primary candidate Carly Fiorina and others.
Still, his remarks on Wednesday were, at a minimum, a distraction at a critical point in the campaign, with Harris about to select a running mate and the Democratic National Convention approaching.
“I think he has points on immigration, I think he has points on the economy, I think he has points on foreign policy,” said Shermichael Singleton, who is Black and previously served as an adviser on the presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney and Ben Carson.
He added that when Trump wades into racialized attacks, he runs the risk of alienating voters who otherwise would be open to his agenda.
“It worries me that when you go that route and say those things,” Singleton said, “people won’t hear the good points because they’re offended.”
Brakkton Booker contributed to this report.
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