Stalking and Squawking

The weird, puzzling and so far ineffective counterattacks by the Trump campaign

Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

There is no other objective way to see this. The Harris/Walz ticket is on fire, while Trump/Vance is in a tailspin.

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are barnstorming the battleground states, drawing capacity crowds in Wisconsin and Michigan yesterday after a huge launch in Pennsylvania on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the Trump campaign, caught off-guard by Harris’s momentum and Democratic unity, has floundered. The ex-president has been almost completely absent from the campaign trail, instead spending his time mostly golfing, as he has for most of the past few months when he hasn’t been in court as a criminal defendant.

Bafflingly, his campaign’s on camera appearances have been left to Trump’s deeply unpopular and weird running mate, JD Vance, who manages to have less charm than Ron DeSantis and annoy people more than Vivek Ramaswamy. That has already resulted in some super cringey moments.

Today, I’ll run through campaign events, including capacity crowd appearances by Harris and Walz and a set of bizarre statements and appearances by Trump. I’ll then highlight some interesting confrontations yesterday involving Harris and Vance. Next, I’ll discuss specifically how the Trump campaign’s attacks upon Walz, including those relating to his 24-year service record, were ill-conceived and have largely fizzled. Finally, I’ll zoom out to assess where things stand in the race and what’s ahead for us.

Obama 2008 level vibes

Reporters who have long covered the political scene are expressing the same opinion: The “joyful warrior” energy of the Harris/Walz campaign reminds them of President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. There’s hope, joy and optimism to go around, and a feeling in the air that something even bigger is coming.

Their first campaign stop yesterday was in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, a town of 70,000 people which still managed to turn out 12,000 at a rally outside the town. There were miles long lines of cars, and many waited over two hours in the heat to attend. As an indication of the energy, here is a notable clip before the candidates even took the stage:

The selection of Eau Claire is significant. It sits as a small blue college town in a deeply red part of western Wisconsin. The campaign is hoping Tim Walz’s rural roots and midwestern appeal will resonate with voters on the fence in that part of this key battleground state.

Then it was on to Michigan, where Harris and Walz addressed a packed rally in Detroit. The venue had to be moved to a hangar at the airport due to the tens of thousands of RSVPs. When their plane landed, they were greeted by an ebullient crowd.

Trump used to mock Democrats and Biden for not holding big rallies, but those days are no more. The numbers in attendance are sky high, and the local press coverage is comprehensive.

Harris handles protestors 

There is a viral clip of Kamala Harris shutting down pro-Palestinian protestors in Detroit in a quite masterful way, drawing cheers from the crowd and chants of “We’ve got your back!”

Critics of this moment urge that Harris should have been more respectful toward the protestors and not risk losing Arab American support in Michigan. But the viral clip only tells part of the story. The protestors had begun chanting, “Kamala! Kamala! You can’t hide! We won’t vote for genocide!” As the New York Times reported,

When protesters first interrupted Vice President Kamala Harris at a rally in Detroit on Wednesday evening, she smiled, with a gentle corrective. “I am speaking now.”

But as the disruption continued, her patience ran thin. “You know what?” Ms. Harris said, with the sudden force and resolve of a parent in the driver’s seat who has had it. “If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”

Harris had also met and spoken privately with Uncommitted National Movement founders Layla Elabed and Abbas Alawieh, where the Vice President shared her sympathies, called the loss of life in Gaza “horrific,” and expressed an openness to discuss the idea of an arms embargo. The founders stated, following the meeting, that it was clear Harris “could lead our country’s Gaza policy to a more humane place.”

To claim Harris has disrespected the protestors, following both this meeting and her earlier polite admonition, ignores these facts. The moment, however, did solidify her toughness in the eyes of many voters who were concerned she might not stand up to the far left of the party and its often disruptive tactics.

We’re not going back, Donald

While Harris/Walz turn out huge crowds, the question has now become, “Where’s Donald?” Trump has no campaign events planned this week except an appearance in Montana, a reliably red state that has only three electoral college votes. 

The clearest views we have into what’s really going on inside Donald Trump’s brain come from his rants and screeds posted to his Truth Social platform. This week’s postings again provided valuable insight into that murky world. I apologize in advance for making you read this, but as New York Magazine reported:

At 3:36, he wrote a social-media post saying, “I HEAR THERE IS A BIG MOVEMENT TO ‘BRING BACK CROOKED JOE.’” Twenty-three minutes later, he wrote a follow-up post elaborating on this fantasy:

What are the chances that Crooked Joe Biden, the WORST President in the history of the U.S., whose Presidency was Unconstitutionally STOLEN from him by Kamabla, Barrack HUSSEIN Obama, Crazy Nancy Pelosi, Shifty Adam Schiff, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, and others on the Lunatic Left, CRASHES the Democrat National Convention and tries to take back the Nomination, beginning with challenging me to another DEBATE. He feels that he made a historically tragic mistake by handing over the U.S. Presidency, a COUP, to the people in the World he most hates, and he wants it back, NOW!!!

Suffice it to say, it is not a solid campaign strategy to merely hope for the return of the guy you were beating because his replacement is now kicking your butt.

Trump did appear, however, with a right-wing streamer, Adin Ross, who broadcast from Mar-a-Lago. Ross infamously was permanently banned from Twitch for “hateful conduct” and has embraced neo-Nazis and white nationalists including Nick Fuentes. 

As a fun fact, Ross is perhaps best known for getting his pal Andrew Tate arrested when he revealed on a livestream that Tate was planning to flee Romania. To confirm that Ross is a complete idiot, here is a clip of him trying to read the definition of fascism:

Trump did have one, long-winded call-in appearance to major media, joining his friends on Fox by phone. Trump squawked about Harris and Walz as “communists” and claimed, incredibly, that they were to the left of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Trump’s ramblings were aggressive and, per usual, nonsensical. Per reporting by the Times, 

“He’s probably about the same as Bernie Sanders,” he said of Mr. Walz’s ideology. “He’s probably more so than Bernie Sanders. She is more so than Bernie Sanders. That’s got to be your guy, Bernie Sanders, and that’s not a great guy. But there has never been a ticket like this. This is a ticket that would want this country to go communist immediately, if not sooner. We want no security. We want no anything. He’s heavy into transgender.”

Huh?

Trump did appear to confirm that he would debate Harris anywhere, even after declining to appear opposite her on a previously agreed-upon debate on ABC. He also blasted Jews who vote Democratic as people “who should have their head examined” and falsely alleged that Harris, who is married to a Jewish man, rejected Gov. Josh Shapiro for the VP slot because he is a Jew.

So it’s going well!

At least Trump’s VP pick… oh, never mind

JD Vance’s latest campaign moves aren’t faring any better. He has apparently decided it would be an ace move to follow Harris around to her campaign stops, taking on the official role of… campaign stalker?

On the tarmac where Harris landed near Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Vance even approached her plane, Air Force Two, which was empty at the time. Then he had this weird flex where he told reporters that he wanted to get a “good look at the plane because hopefully it’s gonna be my plane in a few months.” Here is a clip of that moment:

Not to be out-creeped, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung chimed in online with a disgusting jab, saying Vance should have AF2 “deep cleaned” because “Lord only knows what @KamalaHarris and her team have done on there. The smell alone on that plane must be crazy.”

When Harris arrived with her campaign, Vance beat a hasty retreat from her area of the tarmac along with his posse of white dudes, boasting awkwardly, “This Entourage reboot is going to be awesome.”

Former Rep. Liz Cheney had the best response: “Looks like @JDVance brought all his rally attendees to the airport with him today.”

That was in reference to the fact that very few people are turning out to hear Vance at his appearances. Later that day, at the Shelby County Police Department in Michigan, it appeared from this clip that the press even outnumbered attendees:

Vance had joked that the press near Harris’s plane “might get lonely” because “the Vice President doesn’t answer questions from reporters.” At this point, however, Vance himself might reconsider whether he should be fielding questions from the press.

He was lobbed a softball question from a Fox Channel 2 reporter, for example, but he managed to whiff it completely. Pro-tip: When a friendly reporter says, “You’ve been criticized as being a little too serious, a little too angry sometimes” and then asks, “What makes you smile? What makes you happy?” your answer, as a politician, should be “My family and my dedication and love of this country.” 

Not, “I smile at a lot of things, including bogus questions from the media.”

Keep talking, JD Vance. As we learned from Ron DeSantis, you can’t fix awkward and unlikeable.

Attacks upon Walz

It was probably inevitable that the Trump campaign would try to “swift boat” Tim Walz, just as we saw with John Kerry in 2004. The decision to come after Walz, who served 24 years after enlisting in the Army National Guard, is certainly a curious one.

As Chris Hayes laid out in a segment on MSNBC last night, this was Walz’s career, after all. He served as an artillery soldier, a job that took a toll on his hearing. After serving 20 of those years, in 2002 a medical board considered discharging him because of that hearing impairment. At the time, he was already eligible for retirement, but he convinced the board to allow him to complete his assignment, which had begun just after 9/11.

As an enlisted soldier, Walz had achieved the highest possible enlisted rank in the U.S. Army of Command Sergeant Major. Rather than complete the schooling for that rank, Walz retired in 2005 with the title of Master Sergeant. He did so expressly so that he could run for Congress and protest the policies of the U.S. in the Iraq war.

Republicans, including JD Vance, are now accusing Walz of retiring from the army to avoid going to Iraq. This charge is false, because, as VoteVets has asserted, “Governor Walz submitted his retirement request months prior to notification that his unit was going to be deployed to Iraq.”

This was confirmed by CNN’s Pentagon correspondent, who tweeted out this timeline:

- May 2005, Tim Walz retires from the National Guard

- July 2005, his unit receives alert orders for deployment 

- September 2005, unit goes to Camp Shelby to prepare for deployment

- March 2006, unit deploys

That timeline isn’t convenient for Vance’s narrative, but he has not stopped his unfounded attacks, which are doubly rich considering that Donald Trump once bogusly claimed “bone spurs” to avoid serving at all in Vietnam. 

The Trump campaign has also sought to portray Walz’s response to the George Floyd protests as incompetent. Vance has hammered the idea at every campaign stop that Walz “allowed the city of Minneapolis to burn” during the rioting.

But that doesn’t square with an audio recording of a phone call between Trump and a group of governors in the wake of the 2020 riots, in which Trump praised Walz and said he “totally agreed with the way [Walz] handled it the last couple of days” including calling in the national guard. He called Walz “an excellent guy” and then said to Walz directly on the call, “You called up the big numbers, and the big numbers knocked them out so fast it was like bowling pins.” 

The days ahead

Harris/Walz have opened a modest lead in the polling ahead of the big Democratic National Convention. Voters who were “double doubters” in a Biden/Trump rematch are starting to break for Harris now that she is in the race. That appears especially true among African Americans, whose enthusiasm for Harris has closed the once yawning gap between Democrats and Republicans when it came to excitement over their respective candidates.

Trump and Vance have squandered an opportunity to define first Harris and now Walz as the headlines continue to report significant excitement for the ticket. And Trump has done little to garner any media attention beyond his half-hearted appearances and rambling screeds on social media. 

But we shouldn’t grow overconfident. Trump is very savvy when it comes to media, and sooner or later he likely will find a message that will land on the new Democratic ticket. So far, merely mocking her name as “Kambala” or impugning the record of a career servicemember isn’t cutting it. And having his bumbling, low “rizz” VP pick out there with yet another unforced error before reporters isn’t helping.

One last thing to watch: Just before Biden decided to drop out, internal polling showed that he was in trouble in places Democrats once thought safe, including Virginia, New Hampshire and New Mexico. Those blue states have now shifted back into safe territory under Harris, at least according to polls. 

But her rise has been so sharp that certain states Trump once thought were squarely in his column are now at risk, such as North Carolina and Georgia. If Trump winds up needing to spend time and precious campaign funds on advertising in those states, Harris could well have him on the ropes by November.