Trump Camp Calls Harris Buzz ‘A Great Wakeup Call’

The former president’s campaign was complacent. Not anymore.

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump greets attendees upon arrival at his campaign rally at the Bojangles Coliseum on July 24, 2024 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

JUST A WEEK AGO, Donald Trump’s campaign was on cruise control at the Republican National Convention. Their only worry was overconfidence. Trump couldn’t wait to debate President Joe Biden again.

“We’re measuring the drapes,” one Trump operative privately confessed to The Bulwark. “It’s just too good right now. We’re jinxing ourselves.”

On Sunday, the jinx happened when Biden withdrew from the presidential race and Vice President Kamala Harris quickly consolidated support as his replacement. Since then she’s raised more than $150 million in online donations alone. Positive press followed. She became a meme (in a good way).

And now Trump is sending mixed messages about debating Harris, first saying Monday that the September 10 faceoff “should be held on FoxNews, rather than very biased ABC,” which is scheduled to host the event. Then he challenged Harris to multiple debates, after which Harris accused Trump of “backpedaling” and said they should stick to the original ABC debate. On Thursday evening, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung announced that Trump was withdrawing from the debate, at least for now, “given the continued political chaos surrounding Crooked Joe Biden and the Democrat Party.” Harris’s campaign accused Trump of being scared of her.

Whether this is genuine fear on Trump’s part or a Trump troll designed to recapture the spotlight is anyone’s guess (Trump’s team isn’t saying), but no one disputes the uncertainty that now grips the 2024 presidential campaign.

“The situation we find ourselves in today is totally uncharted territory and has no modern historical parallel,” Trump pollster and senior adviser Tony Fabrizio wrote in a Wednesday memo. He acknowledged the challenges of the “Harris Honeymoon” but predicted the “fundamentals of the race” will ultimately prevail, with Trump marginally leading.

Fabrizio’s memo was a public acknowledgement of what the Trump campaign has come to grips with since Sunday: Facing a diminished Biden was too easy, and they took Harris for granted.

“It’s going to be harder. But the team had grown complacent,” said a campaign insider. “There was all this licking of our chops and what we were going to do in the White House. In some ways, this was a great wakeup call. People are back to work.”

That work starts with finally getting aggressive on the airwaves. Since the primary ended, Trump’s campaign has barely spent anything on TV—just $63,715.13, according to AdAnalytics. The campaign had leaned, instead, on Trump driving the news cycle, and banked on Biden’s fecklessness.

Harris is different. The vice president has more swagger than Biden. And her performance on the stump along with a buzzy new digital ad has laid bare the difference between the two.

“What we could have gotten in earned media, we will have to now pay for,” the Trump campaign insider said. On Thursday, Politico’s Meridith McGraw reported that the pro-Trump MAGA Inc. super PAC was dropping another $32 million into ads going after Harris.

The Trump campaign had gamed out how to attack Harris for weeks. But it still did not expect her rapid ascent and consolidation of support. Prior to Biden’s withdrawal, one Trump confidant who had discussed the race with the ex-president said the campaign was counting on a “bloodbath” of an open Democratic primary if Biden stepped aside.

At the Republican convention, there was a similar confidence about the state of the race. In interviews with roughly forty delegates, The Bulwark couldn’t find a single individual who gave Trump lower than an eight-in-ten chance of winning. Many confessed they felt his election was a certainty. And, like some in Trump’s orbit, delegates believed Harris was unpopular with Democrats because she ran a poor presidential campaign in 2020 and due to Biden’s reported doubts about her electability.

But contrary to the Republican expectations, no major candidate has moved to challenge Harris, who already has the support of enough delegates to win the nomination.

MAGA Inc.’s Twitter feed and Fabrizio’s memo make clear that Trump’s camp still sees an opportunity to negatively define Harris using the Biden administration’s record on immigration and inflation. The campaign and super PAC also believe her past as San Francisco district attorney gives them the opportunity to launch Willie Horton–style attacks against her. “Americans aren’t in the mood for what’s a historic first. They’re looking for who’s best for them,” Trump campaign co-manager Chris LaCivita told The Bulwark. But talk in Trump world has grown far more muted about expanding the map to carry blue states like Virginia or Minnesota and rolling up 320 Electoral College votes.

But it’s been an adjustment, as shown in Trump’s own approach. On the trail this week, Trump explicitly repudiated the kindler, gentler, unifying message his campaign had promised since he survived an assassination attempt on July 13.

“They say something happened to me when I got shot. I became nice,” he told the crowd, pivoting to warn about unnamed “dangerous people. When you’re dealing with them, you can’t be too nice. You really can’t be. So, if you don’t mind, I’m not going to be nice. Is that okay?”

While Trump’s team believes he will ultimately beat Harris, it has also been impressed by her rise. The outpouring of Democratic enthusiasm for her, as well as the media coverage and social media buzz, has fed the belief that Harris is becoming a cultural figure as well as a political one. That has been a Trump strength since the former reality TV star formally declared his candidacy more than nine years ago.

“Politics is downstream of culture and Trump was a cultural figure before he was a political one. But Kamala is making a run for it,” said a Trump adviser. “We underestimate her cultural appeal and her power at our peril.”