Days after a gunman came within inches of assassinating former president Donald Trump, Democrats are ditching the temporary pause in campaigning that they instituted after the Saturday shooting.
The party is now going all-in on plans to highlight what spokespeople describe as the extreme proposals favored by the ex-president and his allies.
At a press conference in Milwaukee, just a short walk from where Republicans officially nominated the twice-impeached convicted felon as their party’s standard-bearer for the third consecutive election, President Joe Biden’s deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks told reporters the attempt on Trump’s life wasn’t changing how they are going after the former president and his new running-made, Ohio Senator JD Vance.
“I would say that we've been focused on talking about the issues, reproductive freedom, workers’ rights, Social Security, Medicare, the economy, a fair tax code,” said Fulks. He maintained that President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris “have been very clear on their vision when it comes to the agenda that they want to put forward for Americans.”
“Our campaign has been talking about that for months since we're going to continue to do so, as the president said: This is how democracy works. We're going to continue to have a candid conversation about the stark contrast,” he said.
The Biden campaign press conference came on the second day of the Republican National Convention, just hours after Democrats restored a group of billboards highlighting comments Trump has made about the Milwaukee, the largest city in Wisconsin and the convention’s location.
Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler followed up Fulks’ remarks by welcoming reporters to Milwaukee, and turned almost immediately to calling out Trump and Vance for embracing “Project 2025”. The project is a transition plan formulated by numerous allies of the ex-president who’ve proposed slashing the federal government’s authority and independence while filling it with loyalists.
Wikler noted that Trump and Vance have both said the “Project 2025” plan is “full of good ideas,” but he said those same ideas “aren't just bad, they're dangerous.”
“They’re dangerous for our country,” he added.
“Donald Trump and JD Vance want to ransack the public treasury to hand out massive tax cuts to billionaires and stick working Americans with the bill. We know that they want to strip Americans of their basic freedoms, like access to reproductive health care, even threatening access to forms of contraception. We know that they not only want to leave working families behind, they want to kick them off the ladder of opportunity and pull up the ladder behind them. We know this not just because of what they they and their allies and their staff have laid out in plain ink in their Project 2025 plans,” he said.
Another prominent Democrat, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, told reporters he and Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin spoke yesterday about Trump’s choice of Vance, and said both Democratic senators wish their GOP colleague and his family well.
“It's not easy to put yourself out there, especially on a presidential ticket,” said Booker, who noted the “unjust” and “unfair” attacks on Harris when she was named as Biden’s running-mate.
But Booker said Trump’s choice of Vance “worries” him because it “presents this stark contrast in our country” and a different “stark contrast” between Vance and the man who proceeded him on the GOP ticket, former vice president Mike Pence.
“It's the same thing we see with so many people from Donald Trump's original circle — his former chief of staff, his former Secretary of Defense — who have all come out and say they don't support Donald Trump's presidency, because when Donald Trump made a move on our democracy and our elections and spread the worst lie I've ever seen that caused one of the lowest, most shameful moments in American history, on January 6, where people stormed into our Capitol,” he said.
“Vice President Pence moved to certify an election Donald Trump's chief election officer said was fair. Now he's chosen a vice president who said that he would not have done that if he was the vice president,” Booker added.
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