Trump veers off course as Harris erases his polling advantage: ‘He’s his own worst enemy’
By
Samantha-Jo Roth
August 12, 2024 6:01 pm
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Former President Donald Trump has faced a rocky transition period since Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee, as his campaign has often been undercut by negative news cycles, sometimes of his own making.
Trump, who was once the front-runner after surviving an assassination attempt, has seen his previous polling advantages virtually erased since Harris replaced President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket. This past week, the Cook Political Report reset its ratings to “toss-up” for Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada after earlier moving them to “lean Republican.”
In recent weeks, the Republican presidential nominee was forced to defend his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), who found himself at the center of a firestorm over resurfaced remarks that the country was being run by “childless cat ladies.” Trump then claimed Harris “turned black” to gain political advantage, and at a rally in Atlanta, he publicly attacked Georgia’s popular Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) and his wife, Marty Kemp, a move allies worry could hurt Trump in a critical battleground state. And in Montana, the former president called Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) a “slob” with “the biggest stomach I’ve ever seen.”
In a freewheeling press conference last week, Trump flashed his frustration with Harris’s rise and routinely insulted her intelligence. He claimed he drew a bigger crowd on Jan. 6, 2021, than Martin Luther King Jr. did for his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. Over the weekend, Trump accused the Harris campaign of using artificial intelligence to enhance the size of her crowds in an effort to downplay enthusiasm for the new Democratic ticket.
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