By LISA MASCARO and JILL COLVIN
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican leaders are warning occasion members in opposition to utilizing overtly racist and sexist assaults in opposition to Vice President Kamala Harris, as they and former President Donald Trump ‘s campaign scramble to adjust to the reality of a new Democratic rival less than four months before Election Day.
At a closed-door meeting of House Republicans on Tuesday, National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Richard Hudson, R-N.C., urged lawmakers to stick to criticizing Harris for her role in Biden-Harris administration policies.
“This election will be about policies and not personalities,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters after the meeting.
“This is not personal with regard to Kamala Harris,” he added, “and her ethnicity or her gender have nothing to do with this whatsoever.”
The warnings point to the new risks for Republicans in running against a Democrat who would become the first woman, first Black woman and first person of South Asian decent to win the White House. Trump, in particular, has a history of racist and misogynistic attacks that could turn off key groups of swing voters, including suburban women, as well as voters of color and younger people Trump’s marketing campaign has been courting.
The admonitions got here after some members and Trump allies started to forged Harris, a former district lawyer, lawyer common and senator, as a “DEI” rent — a reference to range, fairness and inclusion initiatives.
“Intellectually, just really kind of the bottom of the barrel,” Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman mentioned in a TV interview. “I think she was a DEI hire. And I think that that’s what we’re seeing and I just don’t think that they have anybody else.”
Since Biden introduced he was exiting the marketing campaign, Republicans have rolled out a protracted checklist of assault traces in opposition to Harris, together with making an attempt to tie her to essentially the most unpopular Biden insurance policies and his dealing with of the financial system and the Southern border. Trump marketing campaign officers and different Republicans have accused Harris of being complicit in a cover-up of Biden’s well being points, they usually have been mining her document as a prosecutor in California as they attempt to paint her as mushy on crime.
Johnson mentioned each Trump and Harris have data in White Home coverage and mentioned voters can examine how households have been doing beneath the Trump administration with how they’re doing now beneath Biden.
“She is the co-owner, co-author, co-conspirator in all the policies that got us into the mess,” Johnson mentioned.
Biden introduced Sunday that he was withdrawing from the race. In a memo on the state of the race Tuesday, Trump marketing campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio argued the basics of the marketing campaign had not modified now that Harris seems more and more more likely to be the Democratic nominee.
“The Democrats deposing one Nominee for another does NOT change voters discontent over the economy, inflation, crime, the open border, housing costs not to mention concern over two foreign wars,” he wrote. “As importantly, voters will also learn about Harris’ dangerously liberal record before becoming Biden’s partner.”
In related messaging, Hudson advised members on the Tuesday assembly that the NRCC is specializing in how Harris is much more progressive than Biden and primarily “owns” all of the administration’s insurance policies, in accordance with an individual aware of the dialog and granted anonymity to debate it.
Sen. Steve Daines, who chairs the Nationwide Republican Senatorial Committee, echoed that criticism, calling Harris “too liberal.”
“She’s not an Irish Catholic kid who grew up in Scranton. She’s a San Francisco liberal,” Daines mentioned.
Trump supplied an identical argument in name with reporters Tuesday.
“She’s the same as Biden but much more radical. She’s a radical left person and this country doesn’t want a radical left person to destroy it. She’s far more radical than he is,” he mentioned.
“So I think she should be easier than Biden because he was slightly more mainstream, but not much,” he added.
Later, in an interview on Newsmax, Trump claimed Harris “destroyed the city of San Francisco,” although she left her job as district lawyer there in 2011, and known as her “the worst at everything.”
“Kamala Harris is just as weak, failed and incompetent as Joe Biden — and she’s also dangerously liberal,” the Trump marketing campaign mentioned in a press release. “Not only does Kamala need to defend her support of Joe Biden’s failed agenda over the past four years, she also needs to answer for her own terrible weak-on-crime record in California.”
Trump has a protracted historical past of launching significantly caustic and private assaults in opposition to girls, from former Fox Information host Megyn Kelly to his 2016 major opponent Carly Fiorina to New York Legal professional Common Letitia James, who efficiently sued him and his enterprise for fraud.
In an indication of what might come, Trump in a Fourth of July message on his Reality Social community took a jab at Harris’ poor efficiency within the 2020 Democratic major, including “that doesn’t mean she’s not a ‘highly talented’ politician! Just ask her Mentor, the Great Willie Brown of San Francisco.” Harris dated Brown within the mid-Nineties.
Sturdy and clever girls who assault him appear to get particularly beneath Trump’s pores and skin, mentioned Stephanie Grisham, a 2016 marketing campaign aide who served for a time as Trump’s White Home press secretary, earlier than breaking with him after the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.
“She’s going to get a real rise out of him,” predicted Grisham, noting that when Trump is attacked, he “punches 1,000 times harder. He’s not going to be able to help himself.”
On the subject of girls, she added: “His go-to is to attack looks and to call women dumb. It’s his go-to and I don’t expect this to be any different.”
Rep. Maxine Waters of California, who’s a outstanding member of the Congressional Black Caucus and was among the many early Democrats to confront Trump, mentioned she is well-braced for what’s forward because the Republicans flip the marketing campaign towards Harris.
“The first thing I think about are the attacks that are going to come from the Trump, the MAGA right wing — that have already started,” Waters advised the AP. “They’re going to be nasty they’re going to be bad.”
She predicted that method may backfire on Trump.
“The danger is that he’s so arrogant and egotistical that he’s going to step on women and it’s going to backfire,” she mentioned.
The dynamics may very well be heightened on the talk stage, if Trump goes via with debating Harris, as he mentioned Thursday he would.
Republican pollster Neil Newhouse mentioned Trump was unlikely to debate Harris in the identical manner he would debate Biden — or the identical manner he debated one other feminine rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton, in 2016.
“I don’t think Trump can approach a debate against Kamala Harris with the same tone that he approached the debate with Hillary Clinton. Kamala Harris does not have the negatives that Hillary had and she is a relatively new political face,” he mentioned. “Caution might be warranted.”
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Colvin reported from New York. Related Press writers Michelle L. Value, Stephen Groves and Amelia Thomson DeVeaux contributed to this report.
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