New York — This has been a Republican scare tactic for years.
Republicans often claim that a vote to re-elect President Joe Biden is really a vote for Vice President Kamala Harris, an aggressive line that is sometimes laced with racist and misogynist overtones and often with chilling imagery.
But after Biden’s dismal performance in last week’s presidential debate and Democrats calling for him to step down, the prospect of Harris, once dismissed as a far-right conspiracy, replacing Biden, is now a possibility. And Republicans, including Donald Trump, are stepping up their attacks.
Trump and his allies have launched a new line of attack on Harris, disparaging her competence, portraying her as Biden’s primary supporter and accusing her of helping to cover up his health. Campaign officials insist that this is not a reflection of concerns about potential changes at the top of the ticket, given Biden’s insistence that he will not withdraw from the race.
But in a Fourth of July post on his Truth Social site on Thursday, Trump singled out Harris specifically, calling her a “potential new Democratic challenger” and giving her a new, derisive nickname: “Laffin’ Kamala Harris.”
“She underperformed in the Democratic nomination race, starting second and ultimately losing and dropping out before she even got to Iowa. But that doesn’t mean she’s not a “very talented” politician! Just ask her mentor, the great Willie Brown of San Francisco,” he wrote. (Harris dated Brown in the mid-1990s.)
The post comes after Trump campaign senior advisers Chris LaCivita and Suzy Wiles issued a statement earlier this week calling her Biden’s “Cackling Copilot Kamala Harris,” offering a different but similar nickname.
Trump also posted a profanity-laced video, first reported by the Daily Beast, showing him on a golf course calling Biden a “piece of old, broken garbage” and declaring that he had knocked the president out of the race. (Trump has repeatedly said in interviews that he didn’t expect Biden to lose.)
“He’s going to drop out,” Trump said. “And that means we have Kamala. I think she’s going to get better. She’s so bad. She’s so miserable.”
Allies have also joined in the attack, portraying Harris as a key figure in Biden’s faculty advocacy and accusing her of lying to the American people.
Biden, the White House and his campaign insist he has no plans to withdraw from the race. “I completely rule that out,” he told reporters Friday.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre pushed back against the tone of the attacks on Harris, particularly Trump’s reference to their decades-long relationship.
“I find it disgusting and disturbing,” Jean-Pierre told reporters on Air Force One Friday. “She should be respected for her role as vice president. She should be respected just like any other vice president who has been in that room. I will be careful, but it’s appalling that a former president would say something like that about a current vice president. And we have to call that out. It’s not okay.”
It’s unclear how Harris would fare against Trump compared to Biden. Replacing a candidate this late in the presidential cycle — especially one who has already made it through the Democratic primary — is unprecedented in modern history, and the mechanisms are complex and potentially messy.
Polls show Harris’s favorability ratings are similar to those of Biden and Trump. Four in 10 Americans have a favorable opinion of her, according to a June AP-NORC poll. But the percentage of unfavorable views is slightly lower than for Trump and Biden, and one in 10 still has no opinion of her.
Harris, 59, would be a striking generational contrast to Trump, who is 78 and showing signs of aging. As the first woman, first Black person and first South Asian person to serve as vice president, she would also be a potentially barrier-breaking candidate who could win over women, minority voters and younger generations—groups where Trump has made significant progress.
Harris has also been a leading voice for the Biden administration on abortion rights, a key Democratic issue since Roe v. Wade was overturned and could drive turnout again this fall.
But Trump’s campaign is confident that he will win regardless of his opponent, and has dismissed the idea that Harris would pose a greater challenge to Trump, as she is a more polarizing figure than the president.
“President Trump will beat every Democratic candidate on November 5th because he has the proven track record and the agenda to Make America Great Again,” LaCivita and Wiles said in a statement.
One campaign official said the interest in Harris reflects the current media attention focused on the Democratic nominee rather than a belief that she will ultimately replace Biden.
Democrats have plenty of opposition polling data on Harris thanks to her 2020 campaign and years as vice president, but they argue that Biden’s record is ultimately Harris’s record, and that the competition Trump’s aides would face would be no different if she replaced Biden.
Harris, for example, was tapped by Biden to lead the administration’s response to the border crisis, tying her to one of his weakest issues. And if he drops out, voters will have trouble trusting the administration, Harris, and the media to not expose Biden’s weaknesses sooner, they argue.
“The economy is still the economy, borders are still borders, there are still global conflicts,” said Trump campaign spokesman Daniel Alvarez. “And changing who is at the top of the ticket doesn’t change the reality for the American voter.”
___ Associated Press writers Linley Sanders and Josh Bork contributed to this report from Washington.
