Haberman: Trump’s strategy to beat Harris ‘seems to be all over the place’

Senior political correspondent Maggie Haberman questioned former President Trump’s campaign strategy against Vice President Harris, saying the GOP nominee seems “all over the place.”

When CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins said Trump seems to be “aggrieved” for President Biden, who dropped out of the race late last month and endorsed Harris, the veteran New York Times reporter agreed.

“It’s like he’s trying to will this into existence, as if he’s trying to get Joe Biden back in the race, and try to run the race that he wants it to be,” Haberman told Collins on Wednesday evening’s “The Source.” 

“And we have seen him do this before, when things have not worked out the way he wants them to,” she added.

Instead, Haberman said Trump needs to focus more on the race against Harris.

“He is wasting time, I should say. I think his team clearly has more of a sense of how it wants to run against Harris,” she said. “He seems to be all over the place and wants to attack her personally.”

Republicans have also expressed concerns about Trump’s focus, pleading with the former president to highlight policy differences with Harris and sling fewer personal insults.

Trump has recently scrutinized the vice president on her racial identity, attacked her mental fitness and suggested that her rise to the top of the Democratic ticket was “unconstitutional.”

Haberman said his rhetoric related to the enthusiasm around Harris — most notably her poll numbers, crowd sizes and record fundraising hauls — suggests Trump could be “seeding the groundwork” for a potential loss in November.

“He’s already saying a ton of things that suggest to me that he is seeding the groundwork for saying if he loses, that these are the various reasons why. Whether it is because there was a change in the top of the ticket,” she said.

“He keeps saying, ‘They broke the rules, they broke the rules.’ There were no rules for this. This was a totally new situation,” Haberman continued. “Now, she was on the ticket with Joe Biden. So, she actually did get votes. She just didn’t get votes as the presidential nominee. But he is going to blame that.”

She added that Trump will also likely blame the legal cases against him.

While the former president has brushed off Harris’s crowd sizes and her campaign’s efforts to brand him and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), as “weird,” he has also in recent days hit the vice president over the economy and her lack of press interviews.

Still, the Democratic nominee and her vice-presidential pick, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), have enjoyed a boost in polls, particularly in the battleground states. The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s aggregate of surveys has Harris leading Trump by 2 points — 48.9 percent to 46.9 percent.

Trump is scheduled to give another address to the nation Thursday from his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.