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IN THE DAYS since Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race, several Republicans close to Donald Trump, including at least two MAGA lawmakers, have reached out to the former president to offer him a sober warning: Do not laugh off Kamala Harris.
According to two people with knowledge of the matter and another person briefed on it, Trump has recently been told that the Trump lieutenants who assured him that Vice President Harris was easily beatable were wrong; that some recent Republican internal polling suggests that Harris could indeed be formidable in states that Trump needs to win in order to retake power; and that some of the more rabid, openly sexist attacks on Harris coming from various sectors of the pro-Trump right are prone to backfire with critical swing voters and suburban women. (Trump has lately managed to restrain himself from engaging in these kinds of attacks, even though he’s repeatedly asked associates over the years if they’d heard the rumors circulating about the alleged details of Harris’ sex and romantic life, according to two sources who speak regularly to Trump.)
“When Joe Biden was in the race, we were headed for a Trump landslide,” says one of the sources, who’s discussed the matter with Trump recently. “Now that it’s Kamala’s turn, there are some scenarios that make me nervous.”
On the day Biden bowed out, Trump’s two campaign chiefs, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, declared that Harris “will be even WORSE for the people of our Nation than Joe Biden.” Still, Team Trump on Tuesday publicly acknowledged the shifting dynamic in the race with Biden ceding the campaign to Harris, who is now the presumptive Democratic nominee. Trump’s campaign shared a memo with reporters from pollster Tony Fabrizio predicting there will be a public polling bump for Democrats, as a result of the “Harris Honeymoon.”
“As I’ve explained, the honeymoon will be a manifestation of the wall-to-wall coverage Harris receives from the [media],” he wrote. “The coverage will be largely positive and will certainly energize Democrats and some other parts of their coalition at least in the short term. That means we will start to see public polling — particularly national public polls — where Harris is gaining on or even leading [former] President Trump.”
Fabrizio argued that while “the situation we find ourselves in today is totally uncharted territory,” the race did not fundamentally change overnight, given voters’ “discontent.”
Prior to the switch-up on the Democratic ticket, Trump was consistently leading in both national polls and in the key swing states. He appeared to be expanding his lead, and potentially even putting new blue states in play, after Biden’s poor performance late last month raised serious questions about the state of his health.
Trump, for his part, has been unable to repress his rage at the notion of having to face a new Democratic candidate — complaining that his team had spent “time and money on fighting Crooked Joe Biden” and now has “to start all over again,” and musing that Republicans should “be reimbursed for fraud.”
Former Trump White House Senior Adviser Stephen Miller was embarrassingly mad about Biden’s withdrawal in a Fox News appearance, whining: “They held a primary! They had ballots! They filled out circles that went to the voting booths! They spent money on advertisements, and — as President Trump said — the Republican Party spent tens of millions of dollars running against Joe Biden.”
Some Trump allies are threatening to launch litigation to try to block states from putting Harris on the ballot — though Democrats and election law experts see little chance of the effort succeeding.
The Trump campaign also filed a lawsuit with the Federal Election Commission over Biden transferring his campaign committee — and its $96 million in funds — to Harris. Experts quickly cast doubt on the Trump campaign’s argument; either way, the matter is unlikely to be resolved until after the November election.
In all likelihood, Harris will be the Democratic nominee on ballots throughout the country — and other close Trump allies are similarly planning on advising the 2024 GOP presidential nominee to take the odds of Harris beating him very seriously.
“Never, ever underestimate your opponent,” Darrell Scott, an Ohio pastor who has counseled Trump for years, tells Rolling Stone. “I think Donald Trump can definitely, surely beat Kamala, of course — but what I’m going to tell him the next time he has the time to have a call with me is: Let’s not take her lightly. Never take your opponent for granted. Biden’s strengths and weaknesses are not going to be the same as Kamala’s. It’s a brand new game now, and we have to adjust the playbook.”
Scott adds: “The Democrats and Kamala Harris are going to try to make her Obama 2.0, with a message aimed at energizing their voters by saying: ‘We can make history by electing the first woman president — and also, she’s going to be Black.’ So, our strategy needs to be adjusted … For example, she will enamor a larger number of Black voters than Biden has lately, absolutely. Because many Black voters became completely disillusioned with Biden over the years … And she can make arguments that Biden could never make, and she as vice president can try to own accomplishments of the Biden administration, but deflect blame for the negative in ways that President Biden obviously can’t.”
