Trump goes low as Harris gains ground

Donald Trump broadsided Kamala Harris in a string of derisive social media posts on Saturday, focusing his attacks on the vice president’s intellect after a week that saw her both out-fundraise him and surpass him in some battleground state polls.

In a succession of Truth Social posts after calling off his planned ABC debate with Harris , Trump called Harris “low IQ,” “dumb,” and said she lacked the “mental capacity” to debate him.

The former president's remarks indicated a sustained ratcheting up of the rhetoric against Harris that many in his own party have cautioned against, fearful of detracting from what they view as more favorable lines of attack on immigration and inflation. Even as he accused Harris of enabling “corrupt and open borders” and a “terrible economy,” Trump overshadowed those critiques with personal insults, reminiscent of the rhetoric he used against Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign.

Trump’s latest spree of disparaging attacks against Harris began Friday evening, when he backed out of an originally planned ABC debate on Sept. 10 and instead proposed a match-up with Harris on Fox News on Sept. 4 — albeit on his terms, including a “FULL ARENA AUDIENCE!” in the swing state of Pennsylvania.

“Anytime Trump isn’t talking about inflation, immigration and the economy, he’s not winning voters,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican strategist in Arizona. “Going after Harris’ intellect isn’t going to move middle-of-the-road voters. They’re not going to care about whether a former prosecuting attorney is dumb or smart. They want to hear about a plan to rein in inflation and bring down interest rates and make the economy work for the middle class.”

Marson added: “He wants the bouncy house that is a Fox News crowd. He doesn’t want to do ABC. This is a nice way for him to rile her up.”

Harris fired back on social media on Saturday, accusing Trump of backtracking on a pledge to debate “any time, any place” and suggesting that she’d attend the previously agreed upon ABC debate whether Trump does or not.

Trump then issued an ultimatum, saying he’d either debate Harris on Fox News or not at all — while lobbing a number of insults against her intelligence and accusing her of lacking the “REAL capacity” to face him one-on-one.

“Does anyone notice that Kamala Harris doesn’t do Interviews? That’s because she’s really DUMB! She’s unable to speak properly without a Teleprompter,” Trump, who also routinely employs a teleprompter at his rallies, posted on Truth Social, comparing her speaking abilities to those of President Joe Biden and attaching a clipped video of the two welcoming prisoners freed from Russia back to American soil.

The flurry of posts followed a banner week for Harris, in which she announced a massive fundraising haul of $310 million in July — far outpacing Trump — and, on Friday, crossed the delegate threshold to become the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee .

Harris has overtaken Trump in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin, even if only by a few percentage points of support, according to a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll released Tuesday. And a survey by Susquehanna Polling found that she held a 4 percentage-point lead over Trump in Pennsylvania, earning the support of 47 percent of voters to Trump’s 43 percent.

Meanwhile, Trump has struggled to settle on a consistent line of attack against Harris since Biden dropped out of the race. While Trump’s campaign and allies planned to hit Harris on immigration and on her record as a “liberal prosecutor” and a "radical," the former president stepped on that message earlier this week when he questioned Harris’ racial identity during a conference of Black journalists in Chicago.

At that conference, Trump drew widespread criticism for suggesting that Harris “happened to turn Black” for political gain. He’s kept up that language since Wednesday, even as some Republicans have urged the party to keep a singular focus on attacking Harris’ policies, not her race.

“I think what we need to do as Republicans is to continue to focus voters on the failed economy, the failed border,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) in an interview last week. “So I just can’t take the bait and talk about anything else.”

Trump's campaign is showing no signs of pulling back. In a statement, Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesperson, echoed the former president's insults, saying, “It’s be a disaster to have a dumb and low IQ individual like Kamala Harris as President of the United States. She has shown he ineptness by allowing crime to run rampant, failing as Border Czar, and being the most liberal candidate ever to run for President. The stakes are too great to let a dummy play pretend President.”

For their part, Democrats argued that identity-based attacks would ultimately hurt Republicans. Strategist Michael Trujillo, who worked on Clinton’s 2008 campaign, said Trump is amplifying the kind of rhetoric used by the “underbelly of the Republican base” against Obama — which was ultimately unsuccessful in 2008 and 2012.

“If I’m a Republican, I’d rather win on my better policy ideas, not because of racist memes,” Trujillo said.

Trump’s attacks on Harris’ race have also drawn the ire of some of her prospective running mates, even as the candidate herself has not explicitly mentioned Trump’s race- and gender-based insults. Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly slammed Trump’s comments that Harris “turned Black” during an interview on Wednesday and said his “divisiveness” was evidence of the weakness of his campaign.

“That's why he doesn’t want to get on a debate stage with her — he's scared,” Kelly said. “And I understand why he’s scared.”

Ursula Perano and Anthony Adragna contributed to this report.