Former President Donald Trump insisted he is duty-bound to hurl insults at Vice President Kamala Harris despite conceding that doing so might not help him win the election.
Trump was questioned if he thinks launching personal attacks on Harris is a winning message this election cycle during a CBS interview on Monday.
“No, I don’t think so,” Trump responded. The GOP nominee added he believes focusing on “the bad job” Harris had done on inflation and other economic issues is the strategy that will push centrist voters into the Republican camp.
Harris is set to become her party's nominee on Thursday, the last day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. After her swift ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket last month, the GOP was forced to rethink an election strategy previously focused on targeting President Joe Biden's record.
Last week, the Harris campaign began unveiling its first concrete policies, detailing an economic blueprint centered on countering "price-gouging" and increasing corporate taxes. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign has outlined an agenda focused on lowering the cost of living by instituting tax cuts, deporting millions of illegal immigrants, and placing tariffs on imports.
Top Republicans have told Trump to run a campaign focused on contrasting his policies with Harris's, encouraging him to steer away from calling the vice president “stupid,” among other personal attacks.
However, Trump defended his swashbuckling rhetoric about Harris’s intelligence, saying on Monday, “I’ve always spoken my mind.”
“I have to do that,” he told CBS host Caitlin Huey-Burns when pressed on why he continued to question the vice president's intellect on the campaign trail. “I don’t consider that an insult — I consider that a fact.”
“Well, I don’t think she’s a very bright person. I do feel that. I mean, I think that’s right. I think I am a very bright person, and a lot of people say that,” he said in the interview. “I don’t think she’s a very bright person. And you know what? Our country needs a very smart person, and I don’t think she’s a very smart person.”
In the wake of the Butler County rally where Trump narrowly missed being assassinated, the GOP leader sounded a new and softer tone from his typical fiery rhetoric, reflecting that the harrowing experience had changed his outlook on the campaign and calling for national unity.
But in the weeks since July's Republican National Convention, where he said that “the discord and division in our society must be healed," Trump has returned to his sharp-elbows persona.
His latest defense of the attack dog strategy comes after Trump received blowback from numerous Republican colleagues for getting distracted by personality instead of focusing on policy.
“Donald Trump, the provocateur, the showman, may not win this election,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a Trump ally, warned on Sunday.
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“If you have a policy debate for president, he wins,” Graham reflected.
The RealClearPolitics polling average indicates Trump is trailing Harris by 1.5 percentage points. Before Biden made his historic campaign exit on July 21, Trump held roughly the same lead over the incumbent Democrat.
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