As Ohio Sen. JD Vance, former President Donald Trump's running mate, campaigned in Nevada and Arizona recently, several supporters made clear what they want to see from the man at the top of the Republican ticket.

“Stay off Twitter (now known as X), first off, and then he won’t anger so many people. And just don’t be uncivil,” said Jim Van Loo, a small business owner in Henderson, Nevada. “And I wish he wouldn’t go after her, and go onto his policies and what he did to make the country better.”

“Her” was referring to Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s new Democratic opponent. There are growing concerns among some Republicans that Trump has been unable to stay on message since his preferred opponent, President Joe Biden, ended his 2024 campaign last month.

Since the Republican National Convention in July, Trump has repeatedly veered away from a focus on the economy and border security, which his allies see as a winning ticket to the White House, attacking Harris instead on more personal terms.

His supporters out west noticed.

“Keep going positive. Talk about what Trump has done for this country. Talk about what he’s going to do for this country,” Angelia Schneider, a Trump supporter at Vance’s rally in Henderson, told Spectrum News. “They need to attack her record, not her as a person. Her record stinks.”

The next day, in Arizona, a Trump supporter named Alyssa,who declined to give her last name, offered similar advice to her preferred candidate.

“Stand by your policies. Don’t go below the belt, don’t go low. Don’t do the name-calling,” she said.

While Vance was on the stump in Arizona, Trump appeared at a conference of Black journalists in Chicago and made news for baselessly questioning Harris' race and ethnicity.

“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black,” Trump told the crowd. “And now she wants to be known as Black, so I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” 

Harris is the first Black American and first Asian American to serve as vice president. She attended Howard University, a historically Black university, and was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the nation's oldest Black sorority. Her parents were immigrants to the United States: Shyamala Gopalan, a biologist from India, and Donald J. Harris, an economics professor from Jamaica. 

Last week, at a freewheeling press conference at his Florida club, Trump repeatedly questioned Harris’ intelligence and the size of their respective crowds. He falsely inflated the number of people who attended his rally on the day of the infamous Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

“If you look at Martin Luther King when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours…they said I had 25,000 and he had a million people. And I’m OK with it, cause I liked Dr. Martin Luther King,” Trump claimed. 

As the Republican National Convention ended in Wisconsin last month, the election appeared to be Trump’s to lose after he survived an assassination attempt and Biden faced growing concerns about his age.

One month later, some Republicans say – and new polls suggest – Trump is now at risk of losing it.

It’s not just that Harris has proven to be popular after replacing Biden, it’s also that Trump has failed to focus on potentially winning issues like border security and the economy. Instead, he’s using tactics from his 2016 and 2020 playbooks.

On Fox News on Tuesday, former primary rival-turned-supporter Nikki Haley issued Trump a warning.

“I want this campaign to win, but the campaign is not going to win talking about crowd sizes,” Haley told host Bret Baier. “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.” 

Trump and Vance will have the opportunity to counter program during next week’s Democratic National Convention, but it’s unclear whether they will change their tone.

Some Trump faithful think he should keep doing what he’s doing.

“I think his demeanor has changed, and not just because of the attempted assassination,” said Millie Kiker, a supporter who was at Trump’s July 24 rally in Charlotte, North Carolina. “His demeanor is different. He’s quieter. And he’s more focused this time.”

When asked for comment, Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt called Harris “the worst, most incompetent, and unpopular Vice President in history" and said that the Republican ex-president "will continue to expose Kamala Harris for the fraud that she is."