Trump’s team is already on the attack against Harris

The Sunday after the June 27 presidential debate, top advisers to Donald Trump went to bed expecting the Democratic handwringing over President Joe Biden’s performance to cool and give way to a fresh cycle of headlines at the start of the new week.

The Sunday after the June 27 presidential debate, top advisers to Donald Trump went to bed expecting the Democratic handwringing over President Joe Biden’s performance to cool and give way to a fresh cycle of headlines at the start of the new week. But when they awoke the next morning to the Democratic calamity intensifying, they began the early plotting for the extraordinary potential scenario of Biden stepping aside. Behind the scenes, between preparing for a convention and a nation-rattling assassination attempt, they also studied up on the field of potential Democratic contenders, polled Trump against a would-be replacement and began soft launching more attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris, believing her to be the most likely heir-apparent. Now, with Biden announcing he won’t run for reelection, the seeds of that work are already on display. Within hours of Biden dropping out of the race and endorsing his vice president on Sunday, Trump’s campaign managers had released a blistering statement tying Harris to the administration’s policies. Meanwhile, an aligned super PAC has reserved airtime in a handful of swing states to try to define Harris to impressionable voters as someone who enabled a clearly diminished Biden. Trump, too, worked quickly to gain the upper hand over whoever his next opponent may be by suggesting the next debate move from the agreed-upon host network, ABC, to the friendlier confines of Fox News. Biden, Trump wrote on social media, “was not fit to run for President, and is certainly not fit to serve - And never was!”