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As Vice President Kamala Harris once again introduced herself to the nation and laid out her case against Donald Trump, her opponents essentially live-tweeted a political frenzy.
“Is she talking about me?” the former president and Republican presidential candidate posted on her platform Truth Social about 20 minutes after Harris gave her acceptance speech. Since then, she has stopped telling her family history and retracing her political milestones and instead traced Trump’s criminal convictions and civil liabilities, calling him “an unserious person.”
“Imagine Donald Trump without guardrails. How he would use the enormous power of the president of the United States — not to improve your life,” Harris said in her speech. “But to serve his only client: himself.”
Trump’s response? Posting a supercut of Harris’s interview and speech with the caption question “Wonder why (Kamala Harris) isn’t doing interviews?”
So the former president continued his illogical remarks and spontaneous outbursts for the rest of the evening. As Harris spoke about her upbringing in Oakland, California, he asked, “Where’s Hunter?” referring to President Biden’s convicted son. “Look, crazy Nancy Pelosi is looking on, saying, ‘Where’s liar Joe?'” he recounted at the end of his speech, as a screen showed former Speaker Nancy Pelosi applauding Harris as the balloon dropped.
It didn’t end there. He continued to call Fox News, News Biggest The TV broadcast, “A Discussion of Marxism in America”—tries to focus on one complaint (“Why doesn’t she do what she complains about?”), then moves on to a variety of grievances as he seem arrive I accidentally pressed As he spoke, there were a bunch of different buttons on his phone’s keypad.
In some ways, Trump’s response last night recalled some of the classic traits of his 2016 campaign and presidency: angry tweets, rambling press conferences, altercations with reporters, and attempts to throw anything against the wall to see what sticks. From the outside, it all seemed like chaos, but then again, it all worked in 2016, and it almost worked in 2020. How it will play out in 2024, facing a new Democratic candidate whom Trump has struggled to define, remains to be seen.
That appears to be the biggest impact Harris’ speech had on Trump: It disrupted Trump’s strategy, put him on the defensive, and trapped him in a series of attacks that he could not effectively refute.
Apparently, Trump is particularly concerned about certain attacks. On Newsmax, he supported overthrowing Roe v. Wadethen tried to defend an exception to the abortion ban by acknowledging that “this issue doesn’t lean toward us.” He then criticized Project 2025, a blueprint for Trump’s second-term policy proposals backed by the Heritage Foundation, calling it the product of “far-right” thinkers with whom he wants nothing to do — even though his running mate, J.D. Vance, is Intrinsic Connections The architects of this vision were either involved in the movement or have deep ties to Trump’s team.
On Fox News, host Bret Baier gave Trump the opportunity to distance himself from the failure of the bipartisan border security bill that Biden and Harris negotiated with Republican members of Congress. Trump’s lobbying against the bill has been a common cudgel used by Harris and Democrats to rebut charges that they are soft on immigration policy and border security, as well as to criticize Trump.
Instead, Trump accepted his own blame. “This bill is terrible,” he said. “It’s a joke. She doesn’t need a bill. I don’t have a bill.” He also took a seemingly casual swipe at Joe Biden: “Now Joe is missing. He’s on a beach in California.” He then gushed about his visit to the southern border in Cochise County, Arizona, earlier Thursday: “It’s a dangerous place. I was told by the Secret Service and many other law enforcement officers, ‘Sir, it’s really dangerous here, I think it’s time to leave.'”
Trump’s lack of a coherent campaign message stood in stark contrast to Harris’s speeches and the Democratic National Committee’s carefully orchestrated convention. While it’s hard to know how much that mattered to voters, Trump’s interviewers were clearly well aware of it.
Baier and co-host Martha MacCallum glanced at each other as Trump yelled into the phone. When Trump tossed out his oft-repeated line that “many” of the “millions” of people came from mental hospitals and insane asylums, McCallum interrupted with another question. As Harris works to re-solidify support for her party among women, Hispanics, Black people and young voters, do he and his campaign have a strategy to recover the fleeting support he showed with those voters in polls before Biden dropped out?
“No, she didn’t succeed, I did. I did well with Hispanic voters. I did well with black men,” he countered. “No, they only feel that way in your eyes, Martha. We’re doing well in the polls.”
He then went on to praise Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who had just appeared on Fox News. “He was very nice and he said he wanted Trump to win. … I think we’re going to have a very good relationship with Brian Kemp.”
The praise was striking, and a little odd — Trump has long blamed Kemp for costing him the state in the 2020 election because the governor didn’t support Trump’s claims of voter fraud or overturning the results. Just weeks earlier, during an Aug. 3 visit to Georgia, Trump launched into a 10-minute tirade against Kemp, calling him a “bad guy. He’s a disloyal guy. He’s a very average governor… Brian, Brian Kemp. Bad guy.”
But a Fox News poll Thursday night showed Zoom out Race In this state, Trump seemed to be walking back his personal attacks on Kemp.
The host moved on to another topic – the possibility of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. withdrawing from the presidential race and supporting him.
Trump did not say whether he would accept Kennedy’s endorsement, noting that they would be in different districts in Arizona on Friday. But he launched into a minute-long rant (the entire interview was about nine minutes) about how he thought both Robert Kennedy Jr. and Joe Biden were treated unfairly by the Democratic Party (“They kicked Joe Biden out of the Democratic Party.”). At this point, the Fox host seemed to have heard enough and cut Trump’s interview short.
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