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BEDMINSTER, N.J. — As Democrats kick off their convention in Chicago, Donald Trump ‘s campaign is trying to regain its footing after weeks of struggling to adjust to Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the opposing ticket.
Trump will attempt to undercut the Democratic celebration with a jam-packed schedule that includes daily events in battleground states tied to subjects where Republicans think they hold an advantage. It’s his busiest campaign week since the winter, when he faced challengers in the Republican primary.
But when Trump has held events billed as policy speeches throughout the campaign, they have often resembled his usual, rambling rally remarks. And as has long been the case during his political career, Trump has undercut his own message with outbursts and attacks that drown out anything else.
The former president and Republican nominee has appeared at times in denial about the reality that Harris, and not President Joe Biden, is now his rival. He’s launched deeply personal attacks, lied about her crowds by claiming images of them were generated by AI, and played on racist tropes by questioning her racial identity as she runs to become the country’s first Black female and first South Asian president.
The outbursts have alarmed allies, who worry Trump is damaging his chance in what they believe is an eminently winnable race. Privately and publicly, they have urged him to focus on policy instead of personality, and to do more to broaden his appeal with swing voters as they grow more nervous about Harris’ competitiveness.
“If you have a policy debate for president, he wins,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Donald Trump the provocateur, the showman, may not win this election.”
Trump is scheduled to appear Monday in Pennsylvania to talk about the economy and energy, Tuesday in Michigan to talk about crime and safety, and Wednesday in North Carolina to talk about national security at a joint appearance with his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance. On Thursday, he’ll travel to the southwest border in Arizona to talk about immigration before going Friday to Arizona and Nevada.
Graham said he wanted Trump to focus on what he would do on the economy and the U.S.-Mexico border, arguing, “Policy is the key to the White House.” Some people at his rallies agreed with that advice.
“He needs to quit talking about Biden other than Harris piggybacking on those policies,” said Kory Jeno, a 53-year-old from Swannanoa, North Carolina, who was waiting to see Trump speak last week in nearby Asheville. “He needs to keep the conversation on the issues and what he’s doing to do for Americans instead of running off on tangents where he’s just bashing her and that sort of thing.”
The challenge for Republicans was on display last Thursday, when Trump invited reporters to his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, to talk about the economy. As he stood before an assortment of grocery store items, Trump largely stuck to his intended message during the first half-hour, talking about rising prices and blaming Biden and Harris for enacting policies he blamed for spiking inflation.
He was unusually diplomatic, including in responding to criticism from former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who said last week Trump should be spending his time working to appeal to suburban women, college-educated voters, independents, moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats instead of his base.
“I want this campaign to win. But the campaign is not going to win talking about crowd sizes. It’s not going to win talking about what race Kamala Harris is. It’s not going to win talking about whether she’s dumb,” Haley said.
But Trump didn’t take Haley’s advice when asked separately whether he needed to run a more disciplined campaign and pivot away from personal attacks against Harris.
“I’m angry at her,” he said. “I think I’m entitled to personal attacks. I don’t have a lot of respect for her. I don’t have a lot of respect for her intelligence and I think she’ll be a terrible president.”
He then gave Democrats new fodder at an event later that night with Miriam Adelson, the widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who is expected to spend tens of millions of dollars helping Trump regain the White House. As he described giving her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, he said it was “much better” than the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military honor.
“Everyone who gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, that’s soldiers, they’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead,” Trump told an audience. “She gets it, and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman.”
The comment was immediately blasted by the Harris campaign and by some veterans as disrespectful to service members, just as Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, have tried to raise doubts about the National Guard record of Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
On Saturday, at a rally in Pennsylvania, Trump repeatedly swerved again from a message focused on the economy to personal attacks against Harris, including a declaration that he is “much better looking” than she is.
Trump’s struggles come after an extraordinary stretch that has completely upended the campaign.
Just one month ago, Republicans gathered at their national convention in Milwaukee were elated about their chances. Trump had just survived an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally and was being hailed by his most ardent supporters as a messiah-like figure saved by God to save the nation.
Biden, his opponent, was facing growing pressure from his party to exit the race after a disastrous debate performance in which he struggled at times to complete sentences. His campaign signaled it would pull back from Sun Belt states like Arizona and Georgia that it had flipped from Trump four years ago.
But just three days after the convention closed, Biden ended his bid and endorsed Harris, who quickly aligned the party behind her. Some polls show Harris performing better than Biden in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, though most still suggest a tight race.
“We just watched a rocket ship take off with Kamala Harris,” Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio said during a briefing with reporters earlier this month, pointing to a wave of media that, for a rare moment, eclipsed the attention Trump generates.
The former president’s advisers remain bullish about his chances. They insist that Harris and Democrats are caught up in a fleeting moment of excitement with their new nominee, and are confident voters will sour on the vice president as they learn more about her past comments and positions.
They intend to spend the race’s final stretch painting her as a liberal extremist and contrasting the candidates’ differing approaches on the economy, crime and immigration.
“President Trump has continued to speak about sky-high inflation that has crushed American families, an out-of-control border that threatens every community, and rampant crime while Kamala Harris continues to hide from the press,” said Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung, adding that Trump “will be barnstorming battleground states all across the country to prosecute the case against a weak, failed and dangerously liberal Kamala Harris.”
In Asheville, North Carolina, where Trump used an event billed as a major economic speech to go on tangents about Harris’ laugh and Biden’s son Hunter, 75-year-old Mary Ray said Trump “needs to stop the personal attacks.”
Asked whether she was referring to Trump’s most incendiary comments — calling Harris a “nasty woman” and questioning how she discusses her biracial heritage — Ray furrowed her brow and pursed her lips.
“It hurts him with other voters,” Ray said.
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Associated Press writers Michelle L. Price in New York and Bill Barrow in Asheville, North Carolina, contributed to this report.
