Trump and his allies adapt to a new role: Fighting for attention

Former President Donald Trump holds a campaign rally at the Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Saturday, July 20, 2024. Instead of commanding morning-to-night media attention, Trump and his allies suddenly find themselves reacting to their opponents and struggling for attention. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)

By MAGGIE HABERMAN AND JONATHAN SWAN

For the first time since Donald Trump was indicted in the spring of 2023, he has lost his grip on the news cycle and — temporarily at least — his message. Instead of commanding morning-to-night media attention, the former president and his allies suddenly find themselves reacting to their opponents.

It’s an unfamiliar experience for Trump, who has monopolized America’s televisions, newspapers and smartphones for more than 12 months through indictments, primary victories, 34 felony convictions, an assassination attempt and a Republican National Convention at which he was celebrated as a quasi-religious figure.

In the three days since President Joe Biden announced he was quitting the 2024 race, Trump has entered foreign territory. He has been largely crowded out from “earned media,” or organic news coverage that spreads rapidly among voters and costs campaigns nothing to produce. And his message has been, for the moment, scrambled as Democrats have replaced an old, frail white man with a younger Black woman who is campaigning energetically and giving new life to the Democratic base.

Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Biden endorsed Sunday and around whom Democrats rapidly coalesced, has enjoyed a political hot streak that Biden’s advisers could have only dreamed of during the 2024 campaign.

She has brought in more than $120 million in new donations. She has already drawn bigger crowds than he ever did this election season. She has electrified TikTok and put a jolt into Democrats’ volunteer efforts, especially among Black voters and women. And, unlike Biden, she is receiving blanket news media coverage that is, so far, overwhelmingly positive.

The Trump team was not unprepared. They had planned for the possibility of Biden’s dropping out, produced anti-Harris videos and tested her vulnerabilities in private polls. But they were still somewhat surprised when Biden actually did it. Some of Trump’s advisers thought he seemed too stubborn — “too Irish,” one aide said — to buckle to the pressure to quit a race against a man he viscerally hated and believed he was best positioned to defeat.

And they were caught off guard by the speed and ruthless efficiency of the replacement. They figured that if he did quit, Democrats would have to stumble through at least a few weeks of turmoil as ambitious Democrats jostled for their shot at the national stage.

But within 24 hours, Democratic leaders unofficially crowned Harris and stamped out any notable opposition. She won endorsements from nearly every Democrat of any note, earned support from enough pledged convention delegates to avoid serious challenges and was immediately on television prosecuting the case against Trump.

Trump was furious about the switch. He complained it was unfair that Democrats were forcing him to start over with a new opponent after he had spent all that time and money fighting Biden. His team considered mounting legal challenges to her campaign committee to make it harder for Harris to hit the ground running.

Hours after Biden dropped out Sunday, Trump posted on his social media website, Truth Social, that Republicans now “have to start all over again,” and he questioned whether the GOP should be “reimbursed for fraud” because, he claimed, the news media and Biden’s doctors knew Biden was incapable of running for president.

In a statement, Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, called the notion the team hasn’t settled on a message “ridiculous,” and added, “As for the news cycle, really?” He pointed to news coverage of the Republican National Convention and said, “There’s more demand to attend our events and donate to the campaign than ever before.”

Trump has been trying to force his way back into the headlines. His campaign filed a Federal Election Commission complaint against the newly named Harris campaign, protesting the change and accusing her of accepting over-the-limit contributions when Biden rolled over their joint campaign cash. On Tuesday, the Trump campaign sent a letter to the three broadcast television networks, demanding equal time to respond after Biden’s address to the nation Wednesday night.

Republicans close to Trump say they are worried about him and his allies venturing too far into racist and sexist attacks against Harris that could backfire with women and other voters. Both the former and current House speakers, Kevin McCarthy and Mike Johnson, have warned Republicans against calling Harris a “DEI” hire or a “diversity, equity and inclusion” candidate, but some Republicans have ignored that advice. (Trump himself posted on social media Wednesday about the multiracial Harris, falsely implying two headlines were contradictory because one highlighted her as the first Indian American U.S. senator, and the other as the first Black woman serving as a running mate.)

“The natives are getting restless, and in the absence of direction from the top, your best surrogates can turn into your worst enemy,” Liam Donovan, a former National Republican Senatorial Committee aide, said in an interview. “Republicans know they don’t like Kamala Harris, but they need a coherent, coordinated message if they’re going to convince the rest of the country.”

Guy Cecil, a Democratic strategist, said the kind of wall-to-wall coverage Harris was drawing “is rare, and she has taken advantage of every minute of it.” He added: “It’s so rare for Trump not to dominate the news cycle and they have blown it over the last few days.”

More seasoned GOP operatives, including those on Trump’s team — seeking to drift away from the more overtly personal attacks — are framing Harris as a “radical” or “dangerous” liberal, an attack Trump previewed in a call with reporters this week and at his rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Wednesday night.

“Kamala Harris gets in — she would be the most radical far-left extremist ever to occupy the White House,” Trump told the crowd.

The Trump campaign itself has yet to announce any new television ads. But the Trump-aligned super PAC MAGA Inc. broadcast an ad accusing Harris of being involved in a cover-up to conceal Biden’s frailty, and it also tied her to the Biden administration’s most unpopular policies.

And some Trump campaign officials have telegraphed plans to “Willie Horton” Harris. It’s a reference to an infamous ad that Republicans used in 1988 against Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis that roiled politics for decades. Horton was a Black prisoner in Massachusetts who raped a white woman while out on furlough, and the ad stoked racial fears and made Dukakis seem soft on crime.

In the case of Harris, the plans are to attack her record as a prosecutor in California, as well as her support for bail for people arrested during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, according to people briefed on the discussions.