After more than four years of planning and preparation to challenge President Biden for the White House, the Republican Party must pivot its massive machine toward a fresh foe.
But as autumn looms, Lara Trump, Republican National Committee co-chair (and daughter-in-law of the presidential nominee), says she is more than prepared to take on Vice President Kamala Harris — and has been for quite some time.
“It’s very unprecedented. This has never happened before really in US history,” she told The Post. “But of course we’re not entirely surprised. For years we’ve had this in the back of our mind as a possibility. Clearly the other side has as well.”
Despite the tumult and shakeups in the Democratic Party this summer, Trump and her team say they have a clear vision and strategies ready to deploy against Harris, now the official Democratic nominee.
“I think the reality is and what we have to continue to focus on and drive home to the voters is that this may be a different candidate, but these are the exact same policies,” she said. “This is the same person who sat alongside Joe Biden and made every policy decision with him. He was taking this country in the wrong direction, regardless of the fact she wants to run away from those facts.”
Harris’ initial poll numbers have been strong, but Trump says this was always expected to be the case.
“Joe Biden was a very low-energy candidate, and you definitely see a honeymoon period with new faces in any campaign. Plus, the media certainly is doing all they can to galvanize around Kamala and her wealthy supporters,” Trump told The Post.
“But there’s a ticking clock to that. They can get all the rich celebrities they want to show up for her, but that clock is going to go off. I would say it goes off the minute she steps onto a debate stage with Donald J. Trump.”
The path to victory for either candidate runs through crucial swing states such as Pennsylvania, Arizona and Michigan, but Lara Trump believes the GOP has an edge in those battlegrounds.
“We want to bring people back to basics,” she said. “This election is about people’s lives. Their income. It’s about kitchen table issues. There’s plenty of other things to talk about with her stance on fracking or social issues, and we’ll get to that, but we really just want this election to be about a comparison between two presidencies. Two administrations. Under which one were you and your family better off? If we can get people to think about that, we win.”
This is an area where Trump says Democrats have little chance to compete.
“None of us know what their real policies are to improve these kitchen table issues,” she said. “Zero. None. The only thing we know is they say they won’t tax tips. And even that they had to rip off from us. But voters are smarter than ever now. I have faith they can see the truth.”
FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average shows Harris with a 47.2% general favorability rating compared with Trump’s 43.7%.
A recent survey of 10 swing states — Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — shows the former president narrowly ahead in five of these states and the vice president leading in four. Georgia is a tie.
