Trump's VP Selection and Campaign Strategy: Insights from Peter Navarro and Recent Developments

Navarro: Trump 'not sufficiently focused' on policy differences with Harris

Former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro on Monday recommended former President Trump put more focus on contrasting his policy differences with Vice President Harris, rather than repeated personal attacks. "He needs votes, and the current rally formula is simply not sufficiently focused on the very stark policy differences -- policy differences -- between him and Kamala Harris that will swing voters in key battleground states," Navarro said Monday while filling in for host Steve Bannon on his "War Room" podcast. "Instead, when Trump attacks Harris personally rather than on policy, Harris's support among swing voters rises, particularly among women. It's just a fact of life, right now," he added. Harris replaced President Biden at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket in late July and has since bolstered energy in the party's base and seen a surge in the polls against Trump. Her battleground state rallies last week drew thousands of individuals. She has managed to narrow the lead Trump maintained when Biden was still in the race and a Decision Desk HQ polling aggregation Monday showed the vice president with a 0.4 percent lead over Trump, the official Republican presidential nominee. In a poll from The New York Times/Siena College released last Saturday, Harris was up 4 points on Trump in the three battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. This marked a significant shift from Biden's numbers in the same swing states. Trump has largely brushed off the uptick in support for Harris, arguing it is a "honeymoon period" that will end eventually. During a press conference last week, Trump criticized Harris as "incompetent" and repeatedly bashed her intelligence. On Sunday, he accused the Harris-Walz campaign of faking "massive crowd sizes" using artificial intelligence, but did not provide any evidence. Republican pollster Frank Luntz made a similar argument ro Navarro's over the weekend, suggesting that while Trump has the issues on his side, his "persona" is contributing to the former president's drop in the polls. "If it's about issues, Trump is much more likely to be successful. If it's about attributes, Harris is much more likely to be successful, because quite frankly, people like her more than they like him. It's something that, if he's watching this right now, his head is exploding -- and that's part of the problem," Luntz said over the weekend in a CNN interview. "He has lost touch with the people that he needs, and she is in perfect touch," Luntz added, pointing to the bolstered energy during Harris's recent campaign rallies. Navarro was released from federal prison last month after serving a four-month sentence for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Bannon, the onetime adviser of Trump, reported to prison last month to begin his four-month sentence for two counts of contempt of Congress. Like Navarro, Bannon also defied a subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.

GOP pleads with Trump to control impulses, focus on policy

Republicans are pleading with former President Trump to focus on policy after he has spent the first few weeks against Vice President Harris's insurgent campaign indulging what they see as his worst impulses. Since Harris replaced President Biden as the Democratic nominee in late July, Trump has exasperated some of his allies with a lack of discipline in his campaign messaging. In that timeframe, he has attacked Harris over her biracial heritage, blasted the popular Republican governor of Georgia during an Atlanta rally, touted the size of the crowd on Jan. 6 in comparison to the audience from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech, and falsely claimed Harris's own huge rally crowds were fabricated. Republicans have insisted they can win back the White House in November if the election is about issues like immigration and the economy, but they fear Trump has been acting as his own worst enemy. "The issues, the top issues of voters are squarely in his favor," said one former Trump White House official. "Can they stay focused on that?" the official continued. "In these final 90 days, that's going to be the key. Because I think when it comes to the issues that matter -- immigration, the economy, etc. -- are hands down the biggest issues and those favor Trump." Trump has sporadically attacked Harris on immigration, labeling her the "border czar" over her work addressing the root causes of migration. He's also highlighted some of her proposals during her 2020 presidential bid, including when she said she would support a ban on fracking and her past support for a single-payer health care system. Harris's campaign has said she no longer supports those ideas. But those attacks have been overshadowed by Trump's inability to stay on message. Instead he has set off a series of negative news cycles while Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), barnstormed battleground states. "It's not that he's not talking about the economy, it's not that he's not talking about the border. It's that he's talking about all these other crazy things as well that distract you," Brendan Buck, a former aide to former Speakers Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and John Boehner (R-Ohio), said on MSNBC. Trump in an interview at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) convention earlier this month questioned Harris's biracial heritage, falsely claiming the vice president "happened to turn Black" in recent years. At an Aug. 3 rally in Atlanta, Trump spent much of the event attacking Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), who easily won reelection in 2022 and who, according to Atlanta Journal-Constitution polls has an approval rating of 63 percent. Trump held a press conference last week intended to highlight his willingness to take questions from reporters compared to Harris's relative inaccessibility to the press early in her campaign. But Trump used the Q&A in part to compare the crowd size on Jan. 6, 2021, to Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech and to relay a dubious story about a helicopter ride he took with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. And Trump on Sunday shared a false conspiracy theory that the crowd of roughly 15,000 people at Harris's campaign rally in Detroit last week was fake and generated by artificial intelligence. "You've got to make this race not on personalities," former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Monday on Fox News. "Stop questioning the size of her crowds, and start questioning her position when it comes to what did she do as attorney general on crime. Question what did she do when she was supposed to take care of the border as a czar." The former president will face yet another test of his ability to control his impulses when he sits for an interview with Tesla founder Elon Musk on the platform X, which Musk owns. Musk himself has a history of boosting conservative content creators and conspiracy theories. "If it's about issues, Trump is much more likely to be successful. If it's about attributes, Harris is much more likely to be successful, because quite frankly, people like her more than they like him," GOP pollster Frank Luntz said over the weekend in a CNN interview. Trump has seen his previous polling lead against President Biden disappear in the short time that Harris has been in the race as the Democratic nominee. A New York Times/Siena College poll published Saturday found Harris leading Trump by 4 percentage points in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, three pivotal battleground states Trump won in 2016 but lost in 2020. A Decision Desk HQ/The Hill average of polls shows Harris and Trump neck-and-neck nationally and Trump narrowly ahead of the vice president in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada. Trump and his campaign have pushed back at the narrative that he has been undisciplined or that there needs to be a change in approach. "President Trump is a fighter who never backs down and our campaign is a disciplined, well-oiled machine following his lead," press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. "Kamala Harris is weak, incompetent, and dangerously liberal and we will make sure every American knows that a vote for Kamala is a vote for more crime, inflation, open borders, high gas prices, and war around the world," Leavitt added. "President Trump will unleash our economy, secure our border, stop violent crime, and Make America Great Again." Trump in a Truth Social post late Sunday claimed he was leading in "almost all of the REAL Polls," using a common tactic of dismissing those that showed him trailing as inaccurate. He also defended his campaign leadership amid reporting that he is growing frustrated with those in charge. "I did great in 2016, and WON, did much better in 2020, getting many millions more votes than '16, but this, 2024, is thus far my best Campaign, the most enthusiasm and spirit, etc," Trump posted. "My team is doing a great job despite the constant 8 year obstacle of dealing with the Fake News and low self esteem leakers."