Top Republicans call on Trump to stop insulting Harris, refocus on policy

Top Republicans call on Trump to stop insulting Harris, refocus on policy


Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate on August 08, 2024, in Palm Beach, Florida. 

Joe Raedle | Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump is facing a wave of calls from Republican supporters to focus his political attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris on policy critiques, and to scale back his ad hominem insults and conspiracy theories.

“The path forward is to focus on policy. Those are three words for the Republican Party that I think is a path to success: Focus on policy,” former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said on NPR Tuesday.

“I think Donald Trump has a strong case on all of those counts, and I think he and the Republican Party would be well served to focus on the policy contrasts,” said Ramaswamy, who endorsed Trump after dropping his own White House bid earlier this year.

“The winning formula for President Trump is very plain to see: It’s fewer insults, more insights and that policy contrast,” Kellyanne Conway, a former Trump White House, said Monday in a Fox News interview.

Conway, who managed Trump’s winning 2016 campaign, appeared with fellow Trump White House alum Larry Kudlow, who also had some advice for Trump: “Don’t wander off, don’t call her stupid and all kinds of names, stay on message.”

Pleas like these from loyal Trump supporters have echoed through Republican circles in recent days, as the party grapples with the new dynamics of a presidential race against Harris, three weeks after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

As Trump tries to pivot, his talking points against Harris frequently devolve into personal attacks. They include making false claims about her racial identity, insulting her intelligence and commenting on her appearance. He has also promoted false conspiracy theories about the crowds at Harris’ huge rallies.

“When Trump attacks Harris personally rather than on policy, Harris’s support among swing voters rises, particularly among women. It’s just a fact of life, right now,” said Peter Navarro, a former Trump White House aide, on the conservative WarRoom podcast on Monday.

Navarro is a loyal Trump ally and former aide who recently served four months in federal prison for defying a congressional subpoena in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection probe.

“You’ve got to make this race not on personalities. Stop questioning the size of her crowds and start questioning her positions,” former Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said earlier Monday in an interview on Fox News.

Read more: 2024 U.S. presidential election

The Trump campaign rejected the notion that the former president has not focused enough on policy attacks.

“President Trump prosecuted the case against Kamala Harris for over two hours yesterday in a record-breaking conversation on X Spaces,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement to CNBC, referring to the former president’s conversation with Elon Musk on Monday evening.

“He spoke about how weak, failed, and dangerously liberal the [Harris]-Walz ticket is, the most radical in American history. In every single speech, President Trump lays out his bold vision for this country through his America First agenda and contrasting that with [Harris’] dismal record of skyrocketing inflation, an out-of-control border, and surging crime in American communities,” he added.

Focusing on Harris’ positions is difficult, in part because she has yet to define them. Harris has not released a formal policy platform, but she said over the weekend that her campaign plans to release one in the coming days.

Still, Harris’ entry into the race has produced a boom of enthusiasm among Democrats, marked by record-setting donations, significant polling gains and arena-sized rally crowds.

Trump has long been fixated on crowd sizes, both his own and his opponents, and he considers them a metric to measure political momentum.

Harris drew crowds of more than 12,000 people at each one of her five rallies last week, according to her campaign. It’s a feat with few parallels in modern U.S. politics.

On Sunday, Trump falsely accused Harris of using AI technology to create photographs of her supporters gathered around Air Force Two in Michigan last week for a rally. News outlets quickly verified that the crowds were real with video footage and scores of photos from the scene.

Earlier in the week, Trump had also claimed that he draws, “10 times, 20 times, 30 times the crowd size” that Harris does.

During that more than hour-long press conference, Trump falsely attributed Harris’ rise in the polls to her gender, and he again questioned her racial identity.

The comments did not go over well with Gerard Baker, The Wall Street Journal’s influential Editor at Large, and a staunch conservative who has backed Trump in the past.

“By my calculation, about one-third of Mr. Trump’s remarks fell into three categories: false, obtuse or lunatic,” Baker wrote in a Monday op-ed.

In the meantime, Trump has not signaled that he intends to change his tack.



Source

How Florida quietly surpassed California in solar growth
World

How Florida quietly surpassed California in solar growth

Solar energy is booming across the U.S. and, for the first time, Florida is catching up to industry powerhouses Texas and California. Despite removing climate change from its official state policy in 2024, Florida added more utility-scale solar than California last year, with over 3 gigawatts of new capacity coming online.  “This is not a […]

Read More
Yoga, Zumba or HIIT? The best way to exercise, based on your personality type
World

Yoga, Zumba or HIIT? The best way to exercise, based on your personality type

Curating your fitness routine to better match your personality could help you get the most out of your workouts, a new study shows. The paper, published last month in Frontiers in Psychology, shows that certain personality traits may indicate which type of exercises people enjoy and how likely they are to stick with them. “We […]

Read More
29-year-old American left NYC and moved to Istanbul where he started a tourism company that brought in 0,000 last year
World

29-year-old American left NYC and moved to Istanbul where he started a tourism company that brought in $100,000 last year

In 2017, Doug Barnard, a college student at the time, took a trip to India with his mom. The experience was so impactful that it eventually inspired him to become a full-time traveler—a path he didn’t know was possible for him. “Going to India was an eye-opening experience for me. It was the first time […]

Read More