Vice President Kamala Harris' entry into the 2024 presidential race has largely turned the election on its head.
In just 12 days since launching her campaign, Harris has shattered fundraising expectations, garnered endorsem*nts from movie and pop stars, and either closed or erased the gap on former President Donald Trump in national polling. Several experts have coined the phrase "Kamala-mania" to describe the momentum, which may have enough support to sustain the 96 days left until Election Day.
Trump's team responded quickly to Harris' presidential bid, pivoting on its typical attacks against the Biden administration—immigration and the cost of living—to pin them on the vice president, whom Trump calls Biden's "border czar."
But on Wednesday, the former president took a new approach to dismantling Harris' campaign, accusing the first woman, Black and Asian American vice president of not being honest about her racial background.
"She was always of Indian heritage, and she was always only promoting Indian heritage," Trump said of the vice president while speaking before the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) conference. "I didn't know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black."
The comments sparked outrage from Harris supporters, and gave Democrats new ammo to depict the former president as a "racist" candidate. It's unclear what Trump was hoping to accomplish by attacking Harris' racial background, but CNN political analyst Van Jones suggested that the former president was pushing to reclaim what he "loves" the most: attention.
"He [Trump] was trying to steal, dampen and divide," Jones, former adviser to President Barack Obama, said Wednesday night during CNN's Laura Coates Live. "He was trying to steal attention from Kamala Harris, because she's just been running over him and getting all the attention, which he can't stand."
"And so by showing up there, he got attention," Jones continued. "We're talking about him and not her. So for the first time in about, you know, a week and a half, he's now the subject, and he loves that."
There are several signs that Harris holds the momentum in the race. The vice president has gained ground in almost every survey from the past week, including in a Thursday poll released by conservative pollster Rasmussen Reports. She's also made strides in several key battleground states, and her campaign has found ways to re-energize younger voters who before appeared apathetic toward President Joe Biden's reelection bid.
Political analyst Craig Agranoff told Newsweek on Thursday that Trump's "personal attacks on Kamala Harris are indicative of his broader strategy to dominate the narrative and keep the spotlight on himself."
"He thrives on being the center of attention and uses provocative statements to maintain media focus," Agranoff added. "Analysts suggesting that Kamala Harris has the momentum right now likely adds to his urgency to shift the conversation back to himself, underscoring his competitive nature and desire to remain a central figure in political discourse."
Trump has a history of making controversial statements about his opponents' gender and ethnicity. Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, during a phone call with Newsweek recalled when Trump told the congresswomen of color known as "The Squad" to "go back and fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came."
Walsh added that Trump's comments at the NABJ convention were likely "targeted to sort of bring back some attention to himself, and it probably did feed the base" of his campaign.
"But that—that doesn't bring in anybody new," Walsh continued, who added that Trump's selection of running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, also did not help the former president reach new voters.
"And I think at the end of the day, it does add to the energizing of the folks that are supporting Kamala Harris," Walsh added. "It's a reminder of, 'why not Donald Trump.'"
Walsh said that Harris, in contrast, has been using the attention on her campaign to expand her breadth of supporters, including reaching the demographics that earlier in the election season were "sort of laying low."
"We know that this election, as our presidential elections have been, is going to be very, very close," Walsh said. "So it's all going to come down to turnout, and who is motivated, and she [Harris] is trying to give people a reason to vote for her."
Walsh added that Republicans will have to "figure out a different" strategy to reach a wider range of voters before November, but that may not be Trump's campaign "goal."
"It may be that their strategy is, 'we just need to get the folks that support Donald Trump to turn out in huge numbers,'" she said. "In which case, they're just going to keep throwing red meat, which I think was what we saw [Wednesday]."
