Attack of the ads: Harris goes ‘fearless’ as Trump attacks her

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have launched duelling advertising campaigns in battleground states as they attempt to define the new entrant into the race for undecided voters.

The Trump campaign characterises Harris as weak on the border, while her own advert emphasises her legal background

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have launched duelling advertising campaigns in battleground states as they attempt to define the new entrant into the race for undecided voters.

The Harris for President team spent $50 million to cast the presumptive Democratic nominee as a “fearless” prosecutor who stood up to big banks and drug companies during her time as California Attorney-General. Its first advert contrasts the two campaigns as a choice between the vice-president’s forward-focused agenda and Trump’s desire to “take our country backwards”.

The team behind Trump, 78, have launched a $12 million ad campaign describing Harris, 59, as a “weak, dangerously liberal” vice-president who oversaw the Biden administration’s failures at the southern border.

The advertising campaigns will run on social media, streaming services, and broadcast and cable television in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona, according to the tracking firm AdImpact.

Meanwhile, a Morning Consult poll released on Tuesday showed Harris’s approval rating at 50 per cent, up from 43 per cent a week ago. Some 46 per cent of voters reported having a negative view of Harris in the latest poll, compared with 51 per cent a week ago, a 12-point net favourability swing.

Harris’s four-point net favourability rating was higher than either Trump or President Biden at any time during the election cycle. The poll of 11,538 registered voters, which also suggested Harris led Trump in head-to-head polling by 47 per cent to 46 per cent, was taken between July 26 and 28.

The presumptive Democratic nominee’s honeymoon period is about to be tested as she tries to define herself to swing state voters before the Trump campaign can. Her ad will run alongside programs including The Simpsons, reality television such as Big Brother and The Bachelorette, and coverage of the Olympics. The campaign describes those watching this programming as “audiences critical to winning this November”.

The Harris for President campaign has an advertising budget four times the size of Trump’s. On Sunday it reported taking in dollars 200 million of donations in the seven days since Harris announced her candidacy.

Trump’s first ad campaign since Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee mostly focuses on her role trying to combat the root causes of immigration on behalf of the Biden administration.

Defining the vice-president’s immigration role within the Biden administration has become a battleground in itself, with Republicans and many pundits repeatedly characterising her as a “border tsar”. Trump’s new ad features a clip from an infamous 2021 interview Harris gave to Lester Holt of NBC News, in which she struggles to answer why she had not travelled to the US border with Mexico, saying: “I haven’t been to Europe. I mean, I don’t understand the point that you are making.”

Harris has maintained the role was focused on diplomacy with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to stem immigration flows from those countries, rather than holding responsibility for border crossings. A campaign spokesman rejected the description in Trump’s advert and blamed him for killing bipartisan legislation to reform the asylum process this year. “Donald Trump is running on his trademark lies because his own record and ‘plans’ are extreme and unpopular,” they said.

Harris, who was due to campaign in Atlanta, Georgia, on Tuesday, saw her pool of potential running-mates narrow in the past 24 hours.

This is amazing 😂
pic.twitter.com/KpnBKGUUwn

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 26, 2024

Roy Cooper, the North Carolina governor, ruled himself out of contention on Monday, while Gretchen Whitmer, the Michigan governor, told MSNBC on the same day that she was not part of the vetting process. Mark Kelly, an Arizona senator and former astronaut, and Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, are among the favoured candidates for the role.

The importance of promoting campaign messages on social media was illustrated last week when Elon Musk, chief executive of Twitter/X, posted a video on his platform that featured the voice of Harris, cloned by AI, saying things she did not say.

The video, which retained Harris for President branding and included authentic clips of her speaking, featured statements including that she was a “diversity hire” who became the Democratic nominee “because Joe Biden finally exposed his senility at the debate”.

Musk, 53, defended the post as satire but four days later it did not carry a disclaimer marking it as a parody. It has been viewed more than 130 million times.

The Times