After weeks of back-and-forth wrangling, Donald Trump is poised to join Vice President Kamala Harris on a Philadelphia debate stage, but ahead of the event, the Democratic nominee is taking one last opportunity to troll her Republican rival. Politico reported:
Democrats are trying to get under Donald Trump’s skin hours before his debate with Kamala Harris. The Harris campaign released an ad Tuesday featuring former President Barack Obama’s eyebrow-raising moment from the Democratic National Convention in which he meaningfully glanced down at his hands as he joked about Trump’s obsession with crowd size.
“He’s a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems,” the former Democratic president said in an ad that appears to ridicule the size of the GOP nominee’s hands.
Note, Team Harris specifically chose to air this spot on Fox News ahead of the debate, increasing the odds that Trump will see it — and be annoyed by it.
This campaign ad comes just one day after the Democratic campaign also targeted the former president on one of his key vulnerabilities. As The New Republic summarized:
Kamala Harris released a damning message Monday about Donald Trump, straight from the mouths of former members of his administration. An advertisement released by the Harris campaign one day before the presidential debate highlights how all “the best people” Trump hired to work in his White House no longer support the Republican nominee. In fact, they have gone out of their way to sound the alarm.
The minute-long commercial highlights a variety of key figures from the Trump administration — former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, former White House national security adviser John Bolton, and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley — talking about their decision not to endorse their former boss or warning about the dangers he would pose in a second term.
Given the number of former Trump administration officials who’ve balked in response to his comeback bid, this ad could’ve been much longer.
Part of the Harris campaign’s goal, obviously, is to present voters with an important message. But let’s not lose sight of the larger context: As a separate Politico report noted, this commercial about former members of Trump’s team “will run nationally on Fox News and in West Palm Beach — home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort — and Philadelphia media markets on Tuesday, the day he will debate Harris for the first time.”
The point, in other words, is to get the Republican candidate’s attention — and get under his skin. Will the ads help rattle Trump? Watch this space.
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