Vice President Kamala Harris will apparently favor attacks on former President Donald Trump rather than “substance” at the September 10 ABC News presidential debate, according to a report.
NBC News reported late Thursday on Harris’s plan, which centers around trying to agitate Trump:
A source told NBC News that while Harris’ team is preparing to talk about a variety of topics, the campaign very much views the optics of the debate as critically important. To that end, the source said, Harris and her team are focusing on homing in on how to needle Trump to rattle him.
In that sense, the source said, it’s going to be less about substance and more about showcasing Harris as a woman who isn’t scared and isn’t going to cower and who is standing up to Trump and holding him accountable.
Harris will likely try to attack Trump over the so-called “bipartisan” pro-migration border bill that failed to make it out of the Senate, per the outlet. The legislation was put forth by Sens. James Lankford (R-OK), Krysten Sinema (I-AZ), and Chris Murphy (D-CT), and Harris and other Democrats have falsely claimed Trump’s opposition to the bill stopped it from passing Congress.
Harris did so during her first interview Thursday — more than a month after becoming the Democrat nominee — with CNN’s Dana Bash, as Breitbart News reported in a fact check.
“Joe Biden and I, and our administration, worked with members of the United States Congress on an immigration issue … through bipartisan work, including some of the most conservative members of the United States Congress,” Harris told Bash before claiming Trump killed the bill by instructing Republican members of Congress to oppose it.
Breitbart News noted that, in reality, the bill drew “bipartisan opposition from nearly all House and Senate Republicans, as well as many House and Senate Democrats, who took issue with the bill failing to include amnesty for illegal aliens.”
While provisions in the bill, which would increase legal levels of immigration and permit tens of thousands of weekly illegal border crossings, drew opposition from Trump, GOP members of Congress began opposing it once its details began to leak.
While Harris is expected to try to agitate Trump, a source told NBC News her campaign is also working on a strategy to separate the vice president from the policies of her and President Joe Biden’s administration, which could include blaming her former running mate:
“They are trying to figure out how to create some space between her and some of his decisions,” the source said. “There’s a way to say it like ‘I’m the vice president; I work at the behest and the direction of the president.’ She wants to figure out how to strategically answer those questions without creating problems for Biden. … But there are some on the team that don’t really care about causing problems for Biden.”
Trump and Harris will debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 10 at 9:00 p.m. ET.
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