Trump attacks Harris as allies push for a messaging shift

WASHINGTON: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Wednesday used a rally to keep up personal attacks on his Democratic rival Kamala Harris at an event where his campaign hoped for recovery now that his lead in the polls has disappeared.

“And I don’t think she can possibly win. If she does, our country is finished.”

Harris’ entry into the race after President Joe Biden dropped out has dramatically changed its tone.

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Polls have consistently shown her closing the gap on Trump and some now have her ahead in the race for the November election.

Nationally, Harris was ahead of Trump by five percentage points, 42 per cent to 37 per cent, in an Ipsos poll published on Thursday.

The surge has rattled Trump’s campaign, and he’s responded with insults.

He has implied that Harris, whose mother was born in India and whose father was born in Jamaica, has only recently leaned into her Black identity.

Some allies, donors and advisers have suggested this and attacks on Harris’ intelligence have hurt Trump’s chances– and want him to focus on what they say are the failed policies Harris has pushed while in office.

Trump’s Wednesday rally in Asheville, North Carolina seemed to only partly embrace that shift.

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He spent the latter part of his speech attacking Harris’ policies while spelling out his own.

“And Kamala has vowed that if elected, she will absolutely ban fracking.”

“That means that she can’t win the state of Pennsylvania, because Pennsylvania is all about fracking.”

“I’m announcing today that under my leadership, the United States will commit to the ambitious goal of slashing energy and electricity prices by half. At least half.”

Trump did not specify how he would achieve that goal, but repeated previous promises to boost oil production by opening up protected federal lands to drilling.

While Harris opposed all new fossil fuel infrastructure projects when she was running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019, her campaign says she no longer favors a ban on fracking.

Though Trump spoke about policy in more detail than he has at other recent events, he continued to lob personal jabs at Harris, at one point calling her ‘stupid’ and insulting her laugh.

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“That’s the laugh of a person with some big problems.”

Harris will travel to North Carolina on Friday, where a campaign official said she’ll talk about economic policy at a speech in Raleigh.

The official said she will outline a plan “to lower costs for middle-class families and take on corporate price-gouging.”