Trump campaign reveals how it will respond if Dems move forward with VP Harris as nominee
As President Joe Biden continues to face a wave of calls from within his own party to end his reelection campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris is being seen by some supporters as the most likely successor. And now former President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign chief is revealing his strategy for how he aims to pivot.
The Daily Beast reported recently that Trump campaign senior advisor Chris LaCivita is already preparing for the possibility of having to run against Harris instead of Biden given the growing pressure on Biden to step aside. He told the Beast that Biden will still be the focus of the campaign's attacks even if he's no longer the nominee.
"You can’t say you’re cognitively impaired and not able to run for president and then continue to be president,” he said. “If you’re going to step down as a candidate for president because of cognitive reasons, then you have to step down as president.”
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The 81 year-old Biden — who is temporarily off the campaign trail after testing positive for Covid-19 — insisted after this week's Republican National Convention that he plans to remain in the race through November. This comes despite both House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) urging Biden to end his reelection bid, and former President Barack Obama even suggesting Biden seriously consider the viability of his candidacy.
Following his underwhelming performance in his first televised debate against Trump last month, Biden has made efforts to convince voters of his vitality and competence. The 46th president of the United States has sat down for high-profile interviews with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos and NBC News' Lester Holt, given boisterous speeches at rallies in battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, addressed the NAACP's national convention in Nevada and answered questions on complex domestic and foreign policy issues at the recent NATO summit in Washington, D.C.
Still., LaCivita — the architect of the "Swift Boat" media offensive against 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry — expressed doubts that Biden could overcome calls for him to resign from the presidency altogether if he ended his reelection campaign.
"That dog don't hunt," he told the Beast.
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LaCivita suggesting he'll push for Biden to leave the White House entirely echoes what New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote in the wake of the paper's editorial calling on Biden to step down.
"It does not make sense to say, 'Joe Biden is not so enfeebled that he cannot be president but is enfeebled enough that he cannot run for re-election.' There will be calls for him to retire outright," Bouie said in a published conversation with other Times columnists.
On the other hand, LaCivita and Susie Wiles — the Trump campaign's other top official — both said in an interview with the Atlantic that Democrats putting Harris at the top of the ticket would be a blow to their entire operation. Both LaCivita and Wiles admitted their campaign had been specifically built to take down Biden, and that there was no plan to account for a different nominee.
Click here to read the Beast's report in its entirety (subscription required).
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