Trump can’t stop attacking Harris as he ‘hates her’ so much

Ex-president is repeatedly advised by his campaign to focus on bread-and-butter issues

Donald Trump has reportedly claimed he struggles to stop personally attacking Kamala Harris because he feels so much hostility towards her.
The former president has repeatedly been advised by his campaign team to focus on bread-and-butter issues such as the economy and immigration, rather than slurs against Ms Harris, which data shows puts off swing voters.
But Trump, 78, has confided to two people that he cannot help himself because of how much “animosity” he feels to Ms Harris, 59, and other rivals, according to the New York Times.
In recent weeks, he has come under fire for racially charged comments about Ms Harris’s dual heritage, claiming she only “happened to turn black” in recent years, and frequently mispronouncing her first name.
He made similar personal attacks against his 2016 rivals, nicknaming Hillary Clinton “crooked”, and his Republican primary opponents “low energy”, “lying” and “bird-brain”.
The Republican candidate has been urged to show greater restraint by campaign strategists and allies, including Steve Wynn, GOP mega-donor, as Trump falls behind Ms Harris in most swing states.
Mr Wynn, a casino magnate who has known Trump for years, recently shared private polling with him that showed independent voters wanted a candidate who sticks to substantive policy issues, the New York Times reported.
With the race a virtual dead-heat between Ms Harris and Trump, it is independent voters in a handful of swing states that will be likely to determine the next occupant of the White House.
Trump alluded to his difficulty in heeding his campaign’s advice this week, when he retaliated to barbs made by Michelle and Barack Obama in their addresses to the Democratic National Convention (DNC).
The former president and first lady repeatedly ridiculed Trump, who succeeded them in the White House in 2017, in televised prime-time speeches in a marked shift from their previous entreaties to Democrats to avoid denigrating opponents.
Mrs Obama accused Trump of “ugly, misogynistic, racist lies”, while her husband mocked Trump for having a “weird obsession with crowd sizes”, while making a crudely suggestive hand gesture.
Trump hit back at the couple for “taking shots” at him during a rally, and argued it justified his own behaviour on the campaign trail.
He impersonated his campaign advisers’ warnings to him, adding: “Do I still have to stick to policy?”
His campaign devised a schedule of events over the last week to undercut the Democrats’ four-day gathering in Chicago, including an immigration-focused trip to the US-Mexico border.
However, insiders said some of those efforts were hampered by Trump’s off-the-cuff remarks during his rallies and torrent of posts on social media platforms.
The outpouring reached a fever pitch on Thursday, as Ms Harris delivered her closing address to the convention.
Trump reacted to the 35-minute speech in real time on Truth Social, accusing Ms Harris of “lying” and being “all talk, no action”.
He later called into Fox News to complain but was unceremoniously cut off by the Right-leaning cable network 10 minutes into his lengthy tirade.
Ms Harris’s campaign has been buoyed by the party’s convention, which saw a stream of party grandees and celebrities take the stage to boost enthusiasm for the 59-year-old just over a month after Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 race.
It won the ratings battle against the Republicans’ own convention in Milwaukee last month, bringing in an average of 21.8 million viewers over the four days, according to the media data company Neilsen.
The figures eclipsed the average television audience for the Republican national convention – 19.1 million – by 15 per cent. It is unclear how many people watched either of the conventions online.
The highest TV audience for both conventions was their party nominees’ acceptance speeches. Trump’s address, just days after his attempted assassination, drew 28.4 million viewers. Ms Harris narrowly beat that figure, drawing 28.9 million viewers.
Ms Harris and her running mate Tim Walz hope to build on the momentum with a bus tour through the battleground state of Georgia in the coming days.
Tony Fabrizio, the Trump campaign’s pollster, said the team expected the vice-president to gain another “small” but “temporary” post-convention polling bounce of two to three points, noting it is a common phenomenon.
However, he pointed out the Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis enjoyed a 17-point lead on George HW Bush in 1988 following that year’s DNC, while Hillary Clinton held a seven-point lead over Trump after her convention in 2016. “We all know how those ended up. These bumps do not last,” Mr Fabrizio said.