Trumpworld Howls Over The Switch From Biden To Harris
Within hours of President Joe Biden withdrawing from the presidential race and endorsing Kamala Harris to run in his stead, Donald Trump had a response: It was all very unfair.
It’s his classic MO, leaning wantonly into personal grievance when nothing else will do. Biden, Trump suggested, was lying about having COVID. The Republican Party, he said, should “be reimbursed for fraud” because it had been so grossly misled.
And, Trump added, he would no longer agree to the terms of the next debate. He’d rather it be held on friendly turf – Fox News – effectively signaling that he’s dropping out of the next debate as currently scheduled.
It was a cacophony of a reaction from one man, but it’s reflective of the broader response on the far right to Harris becoming the likely Democratic nominee. In the hours after Biden announced that he would withdraw, Republicans from Trump on down flailed for a response. Some Republicans expressed anger, while others were visibly baffled by how to react to the shift. Many reacted by suggesting that the shift from Biden to Harris itself was illegitimate, calling the President’s withdrawal from the race a “coup” and proclaiming that they’re actually running against a system, not a candidate.
Trump’s own communications staff seemed caught off guard. Jason Miller, who has helped helm Trump’s PR apparatus since 2016, announced on NBC on Sunday that he had identified a core Harris vulnerability: “She wants to ban plastic straws.”
Sean Hannity, the Fox News host and longtime friend of Trump, appeared to take the cue. In his Sunday evening broadcast, Hannity reminded his audience that Harris had committed to banning the straws, before proclaiming: “I love my plastic straws. I hate paper straws.”
He used that as part of a broader effort during his hour to depict Harris as a far-left radical, as hell-bent on banning the plastic straws cherished by all freedom-loving Americans as she is on joining with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to enslave Americans in “socialized” health care. Harris, Hannity said, co-sponsored Sanders’ Medicare-for-All bill.
On the non-straw front, Stephen Miller sputtered to Laura Ingraham Sunday night about the unfairness of it all.
“They held a primary!” Miller nearly shouted. “People – 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.”
He added: “Now they’ve just woke up one morning and said: ‘Never mind, we’re canceling the entire primary, we’re getting rid of our candidate, and we’re pretending the election has never even happened and we’re gonna let donors handpick a new nominee.'”
The climax of Miller’s outburst here was predictable: He said that having to face off against a new candidate was “as full-frontal an attack on American democracy as we’ve ever seen in the history of America’s major political parties.”
The cacophony of responses wouldn’t be complete without at least some forays into attacks that play into stereotypes around Harris’ African-American ancestry. Kellyanne Conway, another longtime Trump communications adviser, plowed that particular frontier by identifying her own, non-straw and non-Democracy vulnerabilities: Harris, Conway said on Fox News, is lazy and inarticulate.
“She does not speak well,” Conway said. “She does not work hard.”
Some of the reactions on the right at times seem to try to negate a basic reality of what happened on Sunday: Biden withdrew when prompted with concerns that went beyond his own political future. It’s very difficult to imagine Trump making a similar choice that would involve his own disappearance from power and attention.
Vivek Ramaswamy, the erstwhile GOP presidential primary candidate, suggested that the change mattered little because Trump was running “against a system.” Sean Davis, CEO of The Federalist, suggested that someone other than Biden had issued his statement of withdrawal; former senator and current Conservative Partnership Institute chief Jim DeMint argued similarly that it was all part of a grand conspiracy.
All that being said, it’s not as if Harris’ ascendancy was unpredictable. Democrats have spent the past several weeks in agony over Biden’s faltering candidacy, with Harris standing out as a clear potential successor.
Before Biden dropped out, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) suggested that a Harris candidacy would fundamentally change everything, and that Republicans should be prepared.
“If and when they make the switch, everything is going to change. It’s going to get very close in a lot of those tighter states. There’s going to be more energy.” Sununu said last week at an event hosted by Politico. “I think the Democrat Party would effectively be rewarded, if you will, by independents for saying, ‘Hey none of us liked that whole Biden-Trump ticket to start with.’”
