GOP pleads with Trump to control impulses, focus on policy

Republicans are pleading with former President Trump to focus on policy after he has spent the first few weeks against Vice President Harris’s surging campaign indulging what they see as his worst impulses.

Since Harris replaced President Biden as the Democratic nominee in late July, Trump has exasperated some of his allies with a lack of discipline in his campaign messaging.

In that time, he has attacked Harris over her biracial heritage, blasted the popular Republican governor of Georgia during an Atlanta rally, touted the size of the crowd on Jan. 6 in comparison to the audience from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and falsely claimed Harris’s huge rally crowds were fabricated.

Republicans have insisted they can win back the White House in November if the election is about issues like immigration and the economy, but they fear Trump has been acting as his own worst enemy.

“The issues, the top issues of voters are squarely in his favor,” said one former Trump White House official.

“Can they stay focused on that?” the official continued. “In these final 90 days, that’s going to be the key. Because I think when it comes to the issues that matter — immigration, the economy, etc. — are hands down the biggest issues and those favor Trump.”

Trump has sporadically attacked Harris on immigration, labeling her the “border czar” over her work addressing the root causes of migration. 

He’s also highlighted some of her proposals during her 2020 presidential bid, including when she said she would support a ban on fracking and her past support for a single-payer health care system. Harris’s campaign has said she no longer supports those ideas.

But those attacks have been overshadowed by Trump’s inability to stay on message. Instead, he has set off a series of negative news cycles while Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), barnstormed battleground states.

“It’s not that he’s not talking about the economy, it’s not that he’s not talking about the border. It’s that he’s talking about all these other crazy things as well that distract you,” said Brendan Buck, a former aide to former Speakers Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and John Boehner (R-Ohio), on MSNBC.

Trump in an interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention earlier this month questioned Harris’s biracial heritage, falsely claiming the vice president “happened to turn Black” in recent years.

At an Aug. 3 rally in Atlanta, Trump spent much of the event attacking Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), who easily won reelection in 2022 and who, according to Atlanta Journal-Constitution polls, has an approval rating of 63 percent.

Trump held a press conference last week intended to highlight his willingness to take questions from reporters compared to Harris’s relative inaccessibility to the press early in her campaign.

But Trump used the Q&A in part to compare the crowd size on Jan. 6, 2021, to King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and to relay a dubious story about a helicopter ride he took with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.

And Trump on Sunday shared a false conspiracy theory that the crowd of roughly 15,000 people at Harris’s campaign rally in Detroit last week was fake and generated by artificial intelligence.

“You’ve got to make this race not on personalities,” former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Monday on Fox News. “Stop questioning the size of her crowds, and start questioning her position when it comes to what did she do as attorney general on crime. Question what did she do when she was supposed to take care of the border as a czar.” 

The former president will face yet another test of his ability to control his impulses when he sits for an interview with Tesla founder Elon Musk on the social platform X, which Musk owns. Musk has a history of boosting conservative content creators and conspiracy theories.

“If it’s about issues, Trump is much more likely to be successful. If it’s about attributes, Harris is much more likely to be successful, because quite frankly, people like her more than they like him,” GOP pollster Frank Luntz said over the weekend in a CNN interview.

Trump has seen his previous polling lead against President Biden disappear in the short time that Harris has been in the race as the Democratic nominee.

A New York Times/Siena College poll published Saturday found Harris leading Trump by 4 percentage points in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, three pivotal battleground states Trump won in 2016 but lost in 2020.

A Decision Desk HQ/The Hill average of polls shows Harris and Trump neck and neck nationally and Trump narrowly ahead of the vice president in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada.

Trump and his campaign have pushed back at the narrative that he has been undisciplined or that there needs to be a change in approach.

“President Trump is a fighter who never backs down and our campaign is a disciplined, well-oiled machine following his lead,” Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. 

“Kamala Harris is weak, incompetent, and dangerously liberal and we will make sure every American knows that a vote for Kamala is a vote for more crime, inflation, open borders, high gas prices, and war around the world,” Leavitt added. “President Trump will unleash our economy, secure our border, stop violent crime, and Make America Great Again.”

Trump in a Truth Social post late Sunday claimed he was leading in “almost all of the REAL Polls,” using a common tactic of dismissing those that showed him trailing as inaccurate. He also defended his campaign leadership amid reporting that he is growing frustrated with those in charge.

“I did great in 2016, and WON, did much better in 2020, getting many millions more votes than ‘16, but this, 2024, is thus far my best Campaign, the most enthusiasm and spirit, etc,” Trump posted. “My team is doing a great job despite the constant 8 year obstacle of dealing with the Fake News and low self esteem leakers.”