As the Democrats open their party convention in Chicago, Donald Trump’s campaign team is trying to get back on its feet after weeks of struggling to get used to the leadership of its rival candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris.
What you need to know
To kick off the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago, Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump will make several campaign stops across the country.
On Wednesday, the former president will stop in North Carolina for the second time in just 8 days
Trump will hold a campaign rally at the NC Aviation Museum & Hall of Fame in Asheboro starting at 2 p.m.
Trump will try to undermine Democratic victory celebrations with a packed schedule that includes daily events in swing states tied to issues where Republicans believe they have an advantage. It’s his busiest campaign week since the winter, when he faced challengers in the Republican primaries.
Yet when Trump held events billed as political speeches during the campaign, they often resembled his usual rambling speeches at campaign rallies. And as he has done for much of his political career, Trump undermined his own message with outbursts and attacks that drowned out everything else.
The former president and Republican nominee has at times appeared to deny the fact that Harris, not President Joe Biden, is now his rival, launching deeply personal attacks, lying about her supporters by claiming the images of them were created by an artificial intelligence, and resorting to racist stereotypes by questioning her ethnic identity as she runs to become the country’s first Black woman and first South Asian president.
The outbursts have alarmed allies who fear Trump is jeopardizing his chances in a race they see as having long odds. Privately and publicly, they have urged him to focus on policy rather than personality and to do more to broaden his appeal among swing voters who are growing increasingly nervous about Harris’ competitiveness.
“If there is a political debate about the president, he wins,” said South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham on Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Donald Trump, the provocateur, the showman, may not win this election.”
Related: Trump visits Asheboro as second stop in North Carolina in 8 days
Trump is scheduled to appear in Pennsylvania on Monday to talk about the economy and energy, in Michigan on Tuesday to talk about crime and security, and in North Carolina on Wednesday to talk about national security in a joint appearance with his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance. On Thursday, he will travel to the southwest border in Arizona to talk about immigration before traveling to Arizona and Nevada on Friday.
Graham said he wanted Trump to focus on his economic policies and the U.S.-Mexico border, arguing, “Politics is the key to the White House.” Some people at his rallies agreed with that advice.
“He needs to stop talking about Biden, except for Harris, who is going along with these policies,” said Kory Jeno, a 53-year-old from Swannanoa, North Carolina, who was waiting for Trump’s speech in nearby Asheville last week. “He needs to get the conversation focused on the issues and what he’s doing for the American people, instead of going off on ramblings where he’s just putting them down and stuff like that.”
A business press conference ends with a discussion about injured veterans
The challenge for Republicans was evident last Thursday, when Trump invited reporters to his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, to talk about the economy. Standing in front of a selection of supermarket groceries, Trump largely stuck to his intended message for the first half hour: He talked about rising prices and blamed Biden and Harris for taking actions he said were responsible for rising inflation.
He was unusually diplomatic, including in his response to criticism from former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who said last week that Trump should spend his time appealing to suburban women, college-educated voters, independents, moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats rather than his base.
“I want this campaign to win. But we’re not going to win if we talk about crowd size. We’re not going to win if we talk about what race Kamala Harris is. We’re not going to win if we talk about whether she’s stupid,” Haley said.
But Trump did not follow Haley’s advice when asked separately whether he needed to run a more disciplined campaign and refrain from personal attacks against Harris.
“I’m angry at her,” he said. “I think I have the right to attack her personally. I don’t have much respect for her. I don’t have much respect for her intelligence and I think she’s going to be a terrible president.”
Then later that evening, he gave Democrats new material at an event with Miriam Adelson, the widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who is expected to spend tens of millions of dollars to help Trump retake the White House. As he presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, he said it was “way better” than the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award.
“Anyone who receives the Congressional Medal of Honor, a soldier, is either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit by bullets so many times, or they’re dead,” Trump told an audience. “She gets it and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman.”
Harris’ campaign and some veterans immediately criticized the remark as disrespectful to military personnel. Likewise, Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, had tried to cast doubt on the performance of Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, in the National Guard.
At a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, Trump repeatedly deviated from his economic message and instead attacked Harris personally, saying, for example, that he looks “much better” than her.
His campaign team rejects the idea that he is trying to
Trump’s difficulties come after an extraordinary period that has completely turned the election campaign on its head.
Only a month ago, Republicans were delighted with their chances at their convention in Milwaukee. Trump had just survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania and was being celebrated by his most ardent supporters as a messiah-like figure who had been rescued by God to save the nation.
Biden, his opponent, faced growing pressure from his party to drop out of the race after a disastrous debate performance in which he struggled at times to finish sentences. His campaign signaled it would withdraw from Sun Belt states such as Arizona and Georgia that it helped turn away from Trump four years ago.
But just three days after the convention ended, Biden withdrew his candidacy and endorsed Harris, who quickly rallied behind the party. Some polls show Harris doing better than Biden in swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, but most still point to a close race.
“We just saw a rocket take off with Kamala Harris,” Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio said at a briefing with reporters earlier this month, referring to a media surge that, for a rare moment, eclipsed the attention Trump is generating.
The former president’s advisers remain optimistic about his chances, insisting that Harris and Democrats are only in a fleeting moment of enthusiasm about their new nominee and convinced that voters will sour on the vice president as they learn more about her past statements and positions.
They intend to spend the final stretch of the race portraying her as a liberal extremist and contrasting the candidates’ different approaches to the economy, crime and immigration.
“President Trump continues to talk about sky-high inflation crushing American families, an out-of-control border threatening every community, and rampant crime while Kamala Harris continues to hide from the press,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said, adding that Trump “will be traveling to swing states across the country to pursue the case against a weak, failed, and dangerously liberal Kamala Harris.”
In Asheville, North Carolina, where Trump used an event billed as a major economic speech to comment on Harris’ laughter and Biden’s son Hunter, 75-year-old Mary Ray said Trump needed to “stop with the personal attacks.”
Asked if she was referring to Trump’s most inflammatory comments – when he called Harris a “nasty woman” and questioned how she talks about her biracial heritage – Ray frowned and pursed her lips.
“It hurts him with other voters,” Ray said.
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Associated Press writers Michelle L. Price in New York and Bill Barrow in Asheville, North Carolina, contributed to this report.
