The "most dangerous border" in the world and a dead American dream.
After Joe Biden's withdrawal, the Trump campaign is forced to quickly rework its attack plan ahead of the presidential election. The focus of the attacks on Kamala Harris is on immigration and the economy.
That President Joe Biden is too old and frail was a key argument in Republican Donald Trump's election campaign. But after Biden's withdrawal on Sunday, it seems that Trump will instead face Vice President Kamala Harris, who is almost 20 years younger than him.
The Trump campaign's focus appears to be linking Harris to Joe Biden's immigration policy. During the Democrat's term, the number of undocumented immigrants entering the US from Mexico has increased sharply. Republicans describe the issue as Harris' responsibility.
The border crisis is a Kamala Harris crisis, said Trump's newly appointed vice presidential candidate JD Vance recently at his first solo campaign meeting in Ohio.
A border tsar?
Donald Trump, on the other hand, claims that Kamala Harris' "incompetence" gave us the "worst and most dangerous border anywhere in the world", in a post on his own social media platform Truth Social.
As vice president, Harris was not responsible for border security or migration policy. However, she was tasked with investigating the root causes of migration from Mexico and other countries in Central America. Republicans are exploiting Harris' connection to the migration issue and calling her a "border tsar".
Kamala's deadly destruction of the US border is complete and total disqualification. She should not be allowed to run for president given what she has done, Trump said at a campaign meeting on Wednesday evening, US time.
The economy is another of Trump's attack lines against Harris. Despite the US economy being strong, polls show that Americans are dissatisfied with high food and gas prices. And high interest rates make it difficult to buy a home.
"Look what she (Kamala Harris) has done: an invasion at the border, galloping inflation, and the American dream is dead" is the message in a film campaign launched just hours after Biden's withdrawal.
Called deceitful
The Trump campaign is also digging into Harris' past as a district attorney in California to find material that can be used against her, writes The Wall Street Journal. The goal is to create an image of Harris as a radical leftist and soft on crime.
Kamala Harris needs to not only defend her support for Joe Biden's failed policies over the past four years, but also her terrible soft line on crime in California, says Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump, to The New York Times.
On Truth Social, Trump has given the vice president the nickname "lying Kamala Harris". His campaign claims that she must have known that Biden would not be able to handle another election campaign and that she therefore deceived her fellow citizens. In newly produced ads, it appears that Harris planned to get rid of Biden to take power herself – a message repeated by Trump's spokespersons.
Jonas Cullberg/TT
Facts: Kamala Harris
TT
59-year-old Kamala Harris has been Joe Biden's vice president since January 2021. The two have a close working relationship, and Biden supports Harris as the Democrats' next presidential candidate.
Harris' father is from Jamaica and her mother is from India, but she was born in Oakland, northern California. After living in Canada and studying at Howard University in Washington DC, she returned to her home state to work as a lawyer and prosecutor. In 2004, she became the district attorney in San Francisco.
In 2011, she was appointed California's highest legal officer (attorney general), a post she held until she was elected to the US Senate in 2016. Then, she became the second black woman in the chamber.
Harris ran her own presidential campaign in 2019, before dropping out and backing Joe Biden.
She is married to lawyer Doug Emhoff since 2014. Has no children of her own, but has said that Emhoff's children from a previous marriage call her "Momala". Enjoys cooking and usually gets on the cross-trainer early in the morning.
