On the eve of the Democratic National Convention, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close ally of former President Donald Trump’s, advised his party’s candidate to pivot from personal attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris and focus on policy or he “may not win this election.”
“In the advice-giving column, here's what I would say: Donald Trump, President Trump can win this election. His policies are good for America,” Graham said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “And if you have a policy debate for president, he wins. Donald Trump, the provocateur or the showman, may not win this election.”
Graham was responding to criticism from Trump’s chief rival for the Republican nomination, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. Haley, who endorsed Trump at the Republican National Convention last month, said in a Fox News interview last week that Republicans should “quit whining” about now having to run against Harris with President Joe Biden out of the race. She also urged the Trump campaign to focus on policy and move on from complaints about crowd sizes.
Graham said he agreed with Haley and urged the Trump campaign to deploy them and other popular Republicans on the trail so they can “actually campaign for the guy rather than just give advice” on TV.
“I think my view is that me and Nikki need to go to Georgia. We're giving advice on TV to President Trump. He's got a lot of critics. He's got a lot of advisors, but to Nikki Haley and [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis and [Virginia Gov. Glenn] Youngkin and all these great people we have, let's get together and actually campaign for the guy rather than just give advice,” Graham said.
The winning argument against Harris, Graham said, is not that she’s “a lunatic,” just the “most liberal person to ever be nominated for president in the history of the United States.” Trump has claimed Harris is extremely liberal, labeling her a communist, but he has also frequently resorted to name-calling, questioned her racial identity, attacked her family, insulted her intelligence, laugh and appearance, and accused her of orchestrating a coup against Biden.
“The Democrats staged the first ever ‘Coup’ in America. Crooked Joe Biden was told, ‘Sorry Joe, you’re losing to Trump, BIG, and you can’t beat him - You’re Fired.’ So now, for the first time in American history, I’ll have to beat TWO Candidates, the second being a Radical Left Marxist, Comrade Kamala Harris,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Monday. “It’s not fair, perhaps even another form of Election Interference, but the good news is that she should be easier than to beat than Crooked Joe in that the USA will never allow itself to become a Communist Country. THE DEMOCRATS ARE, ‘A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY?’”
As he has throughout his political career, Trump has struggled to stay on his campaign’s message since Harris rose to the top of the Democratic ticket, using an economic speech in North Carolina last week to launch into tirades against her and using a press conference the next day to explain that he was “entitled to personal attacks” on Harris because he doesn’t “have a lot of respect for her. I don’t have a lot of respect for her intelligence.” On Saturday, he used another speech in Pennsylvania billed as remarks on economic, crime and immigration policies to argue he is “better looking than she is.”
“Every day we’re not talking about her policy choices as vice president, and what she would do as president is it is a good day for her and a bad day for us,” Graham said on Sunday. “I'm looking for President Trump to show up in the last 80 days to define what he will do for our country, to fix broken borders, to lower inflation.”
“Policy is the key to the White House,” he added.
There is growing concern among Republicans about Trump’s handling of the campaign as Harris continues to poll better against the former president than Biden did before dropping out. Two national polls released Sunday showed Harris with a slight lead and a New York Times poll conducted last week in the key swing states Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina found those states were back in play after Trump held large leads over Biden in polls from earlier this year.
“If Trump wants to win, then he’s got to have a disciplined approach to keep the focus” on the issues voters care about, argued former George W. Bush senior advisor Karl Rove on Fox News on Sunday. “I’ve been shocked, frankly, that in the last several weeks, the last three weeks since the July 21 decision by President Biden, that the Trump campaign has not been as focused as it should be.”
Trump supporters in Nevada and Arizona told Spectrum News this month that they want to see Trump go after Harris’ record and pitch his own policy prescriptions without resorting to attacking her as a person and lobbing insults.
“Keep going positive. Talk about what Trump has done for this country. Talk about what he’s going to do for this country,” said Angelia Schneider, a Trump supporter who attended a Nevada rally featuring Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance. “They need to attack her record, not her as a person. Her record stinks.”
For his part, Vance has publicly said he doesn’t think Trump needs to change course.
“I don’t think the president needs to pivot and if I told him that, I can guess what he’d say,” Vance said in Milwaukee last week. “I think the unscripted nature of President Trump is one of the reasons why his campaign gives a pretty good insight into the kind of president he would be.”
