Kamala Harris is a pawn of Wall Street.
Kamala Harris is weak on crime.
Kamala Harris was too aggressive as a prosecutor.
The rise of Kamala Harris has left the side in trouble.
Kamala Harris is a left-wing puppet.
“From the very first day of this administration, President Trump has put our nation on a path to freedom and opportunity,” the email read. “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would put America on the path of SOCIALISM and DECLINE.”
On Tuesday night, Republican narratives clashed on the Twitter timelines of Trump aides and allies, such as GOP director of rapid reaction Steve Guest, who posted a link to a collection of grunts from a faction of left-wing pundits and reporters who were critical had been about Biden’s selection of Harris.
The headline: “Liberal uprising against Biden, Harris ticket.”
Harris is not a lover of the Democratic left, but the suggestion that “liberals” launched an uprising against their selection was sparked by broadly supportive statements – from Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, among others – about Biden’s choice.
Meanwhile, Trump Jr. and others on a different wavelength a different theory at the height of the Biden-Harris Union: that left-wing radicals had successfully completed their coup and taken control of the Democratic Party.
“The radical left has officially conquered Joe Biden!” Trump Jr. tweeted, citing a post by Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh, which had linked to a GovTrack analysis that ranked Harris, in his words, “the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate in 2019,” ahead of Sanders.
Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel drew a similar line, quoted from a Fox News advisory piece by David Bossie, Trump’s deputy campaign manager in 2016, accusing Biden and Harris of seeing “radical socialists and anarchists.”
“Make no mistake about it. If elected, this weak Democratic duo will help and reduce the radical socialists and anarchists at every turn,” Bossie wrote. “Americans need to reject Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and their dangerous ideology.”
“Of course Wall Street is happy with Biden / Harris,” Hawley tweeted. “Right back to the #China appeasement, unbridled globalism, and destructive trade policies that have transferred billions of working people to Wall Street. That’s the Biden agenda.”
The incongruous messages also appeared during an awkward Trump campaign call with reporters on Tuesday night, featuring Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn and former campaign adviser Katrina Pierson.
First speaking, Blackburn, in line with the campaign’s previous suggestions, called Harris the “most liberal, left-wing vice presidential nominee our country has ever seen.” She went on to argue that “security moms” take a hard look at Harris’ support for the Black Lives Matter movement and condemn her for being unreliable about “law and order” issues.
“And they’ll look at their plate as DA in San Francisco,” Blackburn continued, “and say, ‘You know what, security in our communities is important, and I do not want anyone to say that they do not care about hardened criminals. . ‘”
But when Pierson began making her case, she pushed in a different direction, suggesting that Harris actually, in her time as prosecutor, went too far and was too draconian in her treatment of criminal suspects and convicts.
“Her record as attorney general in California is also bad. She fought to keep submissions locked up in crowded prisons so they could be used for cheap labor. She attacked champions for laws that put parents in jail for traffic. and persecuted mentally ill, “Pierson said. “As an African-American woman, we welcome Kamala Harris to the race.”
Pressed to make sense of the criticism, Pierson suggested that she and Blackburn were on the same page, and told reporters that they ‘had’ problem ‘conflicts.’
“She’s a fake,” Harris’s Pierson said, repeating a line from earlier in the call. “She went to the wrong people. If you do not go to gangs, but you go to citizens, for example Black men and marijuana, something she even tells them to do, it’s really a double standard they’re trying to do. go ahead and move forward. “
The exchange underscores the tension between two tactics central to the Trump campaign’s efforts to oust Biden’s support. The suggestion that Biden and Harris are tools of a socialist cabal is intended to win back moderate voters, who, according to most polls, are pushing for the Democrats. But Trump and Republicans are also trying to divert support and enthusiasm for Biden and Harris among voters of color by pointing to their records on criminal justice issues.
Harris’ record of that county was condemned in great detail during the Democratic primary, when rival candidates and activists questioned their progressive references, accusing the former prosecutor of too easily embracing the “tough on crime” policy of the 1990s and early 2000s. The reality was complicated. Harris made earlier headlines in her career for not seeking the death penalty against a suspect accused of murdering a police officer, but also, later, appealing a federal court decision that called California’s implementation of capital punishment unconstitutional.
During the campaign, she released a criminal justice reform plan that would ban the death penalty, end the use of cash and, as part of a broader effort across party lines, attempt to roll back a massive prison crisis that has some of its roots in Biden’s 1994 Crime Act. – legislation that at the time enjoyed bipartisan support, but is now widely criticized by Democrats and many Republicans as too punitive.
The opposite lines of attack against Biden and Harris caught the eye of some Democrats, such as Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, who on Tuesday night suggested the dissonance was emblematic of a party and campaign on loose ends over how to get the Democratic ticket must address.
“They have had all this time to think and prepare and they still do not know what to do about Kamala,” Schatz tweeted. “Historic choice. Smart pick. Exciting. This is good.”
CNN’s DJ Judd contributed to this story.
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