NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s campaign has spent the last year and a half fiercely attacking Joe Biden, ridiculing his policies, mocking his blunders and looking forward to a rematch that made them feel like they had won.
But they also spent weeks preparing for the possibility that Biden might drop out of the race. They prepared a litany of attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris, which they immediately unleashed when Biden made his surprise announcement on Sunday that he would step down. Biden soon after endorsed Harris, who quickly gained support from Democrats, as the party’s nominee.
“Rest assured, we are 100 percent ready,” Tony Fabrizio, a pollster and senior adviser to Trump, said at the Republican National Convention last week. He noted that speakers at the event often referred to the “Biden-Harris” administration in their speeches and said the campaign had prepared anti-Harris videos that could be used in the event of an early resignation by Biden.
Still, the shakeup less than four months before Election Day presents recent challenges for Trump’s team, which until recently had focused on matching the former president’s drive and mental acuity with Biden’s. Trump will now face a recent, as-yet-uncertain opponent at a time when voters have made clear they are frustrated with their current options and desperate for recent, younger options.
While Trump’s advisers wanted Biden to stay in the race, they argue that running against Harris – who they see as the most likely Democratic candidate – would not be much different from running against Biden.
They will try to link her to what they see as the Biden administration’s failures by claiming that Harris was involved in everything that happened under Biden’s administration, especially the handling of the southern border. Harris was tasked with leading the administration’s response to the border crisis.
In a statement on Sunday, Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita and his colleague Susie Wiles reacted to the news and lashed out at Harris, stressing that she would be “even WORSE for the people of our country than Joe Biden.”
“They each own each other’s records and there is no distance between them,” they said.
They will also continue to accuse her of being involved in the cover-up of Biden’s failing health, believing voters have lost faith in Democrats and the press for not exposing Biden’s weaknesses sooner. And they will attack her record in California, where she served as district attorney and attorney general before being elected to the Senate.
They have also made it clear that they want to continue to pressure Biden – in a sense, they are still running against him. They argue that if he is not fit to run, he is not fit to finish his term and must resign as well.
“Joe Biden cannot withdraw from the presidential race because he is too mentally incompetent and still remain in the White House,” LaCivita and Wiles wrote in their memo. “Biden is a national security threat with severe cognitive decline and a clear and present danger to every man, woman and child in our country.”
Trump’s campaign team had tried to persuade Biden to stay in the race, including by portraying the Democrats’ efforts to replace him as a “coup.”
But immediately after last month’s debate, they began to step up their attacks on Harris.
In a post celebrating Independence Day on his website Truth Social, Trump singled out Harris, calling her his “potential new Democratic challenger” and giving her a recent derisive nickname: “Laffin’ Kamala Harris.”
While Trump publicly insisted that he still believed in Biden as the ultimate candidate, he was caught in a profanity-laced video saying that he thought she was a “better” rival.
“She’s so bad. She’s so pathetic,” he said.
At his rally in Michigan on Saturday night, Trump asked the crowd whether they would prefer him to run against Biden or Harris. When Trump mentioned Biden, the crowd erupted in cheers. Harris’ name was met with boos.
He continued to make fun of Harris’ laughter, calling her “crazy” and “insane.”
When the news finally came, Republicans were ready.
Less than an hour after Biden’s announcement, Trump’s campaign filled its social media channels with clips of Harris’s previous statements that could turn off some voters, including one in which she advocated for a ban on plastic straws.
Trump’s main Super PAC, MAGA Inc., also released a recent ad attempting to blame Harris for Biden’s policies.
“You created this mess. You – no, Kamala – are responsible for this failed record,” says the narrator.
The chaos currently reigning within the Democratic Party as it desperately tries to find a recent candidate comes just days after the conclusion of the Republican National Convention, where Republicans rallied unanimously behind Trump after he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania.
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley described the developing situation as “pretty divided.”
“We are a completely unified party,” Whatley said in an interview on Fox News Channel, while “the Democrats are in free fall.”
Whatley said Republicans would not change their plans despite the Democrats’ restructuring.
“President Trump will run his campaign, and whether it’s Kamala Harris or anyone else, they will pursue the exact same failed agenda that Joe Biden has pursued for the last four years,” he said.
However, it remains unclear how a recent candidate at the head of the Democrats will change the dynamics of the race.
Polls have shown Harris’s approval ratings to be similar to those of Trump and Biden. A June AP-NORC poll found that about 4 in 10 Americans have a favorable opinion of her, with the share who have an unfavorable opinion slightly lower than for Trump and Biden.
At 59, Harris would be a stark generational contrast to Trump, who turned 78 last month. She would also be the first black woman and the first person of South Asian descent to serve as president – a potentially groundbreaking candidacy that could win recent support from women, minority voters and younger voters.
Trump has a history of making offensive remarks about women and people of color, which Harris will likely address on the debate stage and during the campaign.
Harris has also been the Biden administration’s leading voice on abortion rights, a key issue for Democrats since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which could again boost voter turnout this fall.
Faced with the prospect of debating a former prosecutor, Trump on Sunday called for a change of venue to friendlier territory for the next debate. Fox News should moderate the debate and not ABC, as previously agreed.
At an event hosted by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and the Cook Political Report last week, pollster Fabrizio said Harris was pretty much unthinkable for vice president.
“The only thing voters know about her is her laughter,” said Fabrizio. “And that’s a double-edged sword for them.”
Republicans have also indicated that they may take legal action to keep Biden on the ballot.
But Edward B. Foley, a law professor and director of the Center for Election Law at Ohio State University, said political parties control their nomination processes and a Republican lawsuit would likely be unsuccessful.
“I just don’t see how the Republican Party or anyone associated with the Republican Party could file suit in this context,” he said. Unlike in general elections, “in primaries, voters cast their vote, but they have no control over the decision.”
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Associated Press writer Christina Almeida Cassidy contributed to this report from Atlanta.
