Election campaign of words Trump's mocking names don't catch on - Harris turns the tables
Alarm in Trump's campaign team: while the Democrats only label the New Yorker "weird", the conservatives fail to find Kamala Harris' points of attack and hit her verbally.
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- After Donald Trump repeatedly hit political opponents with epithets like "Sleepy Joe", such attempts have so far failed with Kamala Harris.
- Neither her laugh nor "lies" have stuck to Harris: Republicans are desperate for new points of attack.
- They want to ban petrol cars as well as red meat and are radical leftists: so far, the new attacks have come to nothing.
- The Democrats no longer portray Trump as the end of democracy, but simply call him "weird". The reactions show how much this upsets the other side.
On July 20, Donald Trump's campaign team is on track. Things are going so well that they are even holding back on attacking their political opponents because they are tearing themselves apart after losing the first TV duel. At the same time, a term coined by Trump himself with regard to US President Biden was circulating in the press: "Sleepy Joe" is driving Washington crazy.
But the following day, "Sleepy Joe" turns the Trump team's world upside down when he decides not to run for office again. The fact that Kamala Harris emerges as the favorite for the race for the White House doesn't even surprise her. The problem is rather that they don't yet have an attack strategy against her. And no catchy mocking name either.
Trump is making his first attempt at this on American Independence Day. In a Truth social post, the New Yorker wishes "everyone a happy 4th of July" and then sarcastically includes those he wants to give one to on this holiday: the "highly incompetent 'president'" or the "deranged Biden prosecutor Jack Smith".
"Laughing Kamala Harris" becomes a boomerang
For the first time, the 78-year-old ennobles Kamala Harris with the nickname "Laffin'", meaning laughing. She was "possibly the new challenger", but had done "badly" in her party. Trump's team will have been amazed at how quickly and unanimously the Democrats agreed on Harris after Biden's withdrawal.
Even if the Republican Matt Gaetz responded to Trump's post with "That's it. The best thing ever. Period" , the epithet "Laughing Kamala Harris", which is intended to deny the 60-year-old's seriousness for the office of president, is hardly making waves. On the contrary: the attack is a shot in the arm.
The majority of commentators do not find Harris' laughter silly, but likeable. The entrepreneur portal Inc. points out the psychological benefits of the "mobilizing power of joy". " The New York Times calls her cheerfulness "one of her most effective weapons". And the "Religion News Service" headlines: "What the Talmud teaches us about men who laugh at Kamala Harris' laughter".
Pipe burst "Lying Kamala Harris"
By the time Harris' campaign team itself takes up her laughter attack, his verbal assault has failed miserably. His wisdom "Margret Thatcher didn't laugh like that, did she? If she had, she wouldn't be Margaret Thatcher" comes to nothing.
Because Trump's strategists also realize this, they try a new wording: The Republican frontrunner wants to draw attention to the fact that Harris did not speak openly about Biden's constitution as vice president. But because "lyin'" sounds so similar to lion, Trump has to spell it out in a speech.
That is not ideal. The insult may be getting a bigger response on social media than "Laffin' Kamala Harris", but the topic is off-topic. Instead of Joe Biden's health, the topic after his resignation is that he put the country first. The focus turns to Harris, the party's support and her nomination.
Desperate search for points of attack
Conservatives are desperately looking for new points of attack: She shouldn't have taken the sceptre in the first place, they complain. She is too soft on crime, but also too hard on prisoners. And Ted Cruz tones down: "She won't get my gun. She's not getting my internal combustion engine. And she's not getting my steaks and cheeseburgers for the hell of it."
That's as far as the Republicans got. Trump's running mate James David Vance also warns in his latest campaign speech that Harris wants to ban fracking, gasoline engines and red meat. "She thinks she's better than us. She thinks she's better than you," he says in Atlanta, Georgia.
Because Trump has hardly any ammunition against Harris, he has already fallen into the racism trap - and Vance has landed the first misogynistic hit with "childless cat ladies". By contrast, it is standard for the Republicans to place their opponent on the extreme left: the fact that Fox News calls their vice-president Tim Walz the "most radical far-left governor" in the country fits the picture.
And also that Walz is called "Tampon Tim" because he has campaigned for free tampons in schools in Minnesota - in addition to free lunches.
Harris' new wording
The Democrats have also changed their wording since Harris took Biden's place. And this is only logical: the fact that the White House has repeatedly emphasized that democracy is at stake because of Trump has worn thin. On July 26, Harris therefore calls her opponent "weird" for the first time .
Weird means strange, crazy or funny. The term is rather broad and less specific. It fits the various scenes that Trump and Vance bring to the stage - such as when the 78-year-old raves about film villain Hannibal Lecter, warns of wind turbines or fantasizes about death from shark attacks.
The reaction of his opponent suggests that the new tactic is working. "They're the weird ones," Trump says, taking the honorific. "Nobody has ever called me weird. I'm many things, but not weird. And neither is he, I'm telling you. JD [Vance] is not at all. It's you."
The Republicans are reacting sensitively: Vivek Ramaswamy, for example, calls the Democrats' new wording "stupid and childish". This is surprising given the fact that Trump is always keen to emphasize that his internal party opponent Chris Christie should not be called a "fat pig".
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