CHICAGO — Former President Donald Trump’s campaign spent Tuesday trying to convince voters they are unsafe in America. Starting with a press conference in Chicago to counter-program the Democratic National Convention, followed by vice presidential nominee JD Vance’s appearance with police officers in Wisconsin, and Trump himself appearing in suburban Michigan, the campaign was trying to push a single message about how Vice President Kamala Harris would make voters’ worlds more dangerous.
It’s a message Trump has consistently focused on since he entered the electoral arena, from calling for a xenophobic ban on Muslim immigration in the 2016 GOP primary to withering attacks on “defund the police” in 2020. A few words from Trump on Tuesday, however, showcased how his extremist tendencies and chaotic behavior, covering everything from his racism to inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, frequently undermine what should be one of his strongest electoral messages.
“Her father is, as you know, a Marxist professor,” Trump said of Harris before mocking her appearance. “You see her now with the smile — she’s gotten rid of the laugh in recent days — they told her don’t laugh.”
He also couldn’t help but complain again about President Joe Biden leaving the 2024 race after pressure from within his party: “That was a coup. I’m no fan of his, but it started with the debate, it was a vicious, violent overthrow of the president of the United States.”
Trump also failed to fully deliver the intended message. His campaign released snippets of his speech to reporters, suggesting he would call for child rapists and child traffickers to be eligible for the death penalty. The 78-year-old never said as much in his speech, and his campaign later claimed he decided not to reveal such important policies when they would be overshadowed by the Democratic convention.
A Cook Political Report survey of battleground states released last week shows the problem Trump is facing: Americans might not trust Democrats on public safety, but they also don’t trust Donald Trump. While voters trust him more than Harris on a trio of issues — the border and immigration, crime and violence, and dealing with foreign crises and wars — he and Harris are essentially tied on the actual question of who makes voters feel safe, with 46% saying Harris and 45% saying Trump.
“I think that really speaks to voters’ memories of how erratic his temperament is, concerns about his penchant for retribution and extremism,” GOP pollster Greg Strimple, whose firm GS Strategy Group helped conduct the survey, told reporters last week. “As a result, Trump is not able, currently at least, to leverage an advantage on issues that should be working in his favor.”
Even the location of Tuesday’s speech highlights why some Americans might not trust Trump to keep them safe. Trump spoke in Howell, Michigan, a town with a long history of right-wing extremism, including a march earlier this year in which white supremacists chanted about their love of Hitler and Trump.
“And you didn’t hear Donald Trump try to distance himself from that at all whatsoever,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said on a call with reporters organized by the Harris campaign before Trump’s visit. “It’s outrageous to me that he would not be denouncing that kind of behavior and that kind of language.”
There are, of course, factual problems with Trump’s message. Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans, and preliminary data indicates the COVID-era spike in violent crime is over and may even be reversing. But polling consistently shows voters trust Trump more on both issues, which is why his campaign keeps hammering them.
“Democrats are holding their convention in Chicago in order to showcase it, and yet, as you know, over Fourth of July weekend, 117 people were shot and 17 were killed,” Trump said Tuesday while reading off prepared remarks. “40 were shot last weekend. That’s a war zone, that’s worse than Afghanistan.”
“Speaking of Afghanistan,” he added, in another aside, “it was the worst and most embarrassing day in our country, in my opinion. We left people behind, we left $85 billion of equipment behind.”
At the Democratic National Convention, however, Democratic-aligned military leaders were warning about the threat of Trump deploying the U.S. military to deal with domestic problems like crime and immigration, insisting it would endanger both troops and American citizens.
“It starts with him about who he is, the person, because he doesn’t even listen to his own advisers,” retired Major General Randy Manner told HuffPost. “Under Trump, we should be, quite frankly, very afraid for our sons and daughters and husbands and wives that are in our military, let alone our citizens.”
And on the airwaves, both Democratic and Republican groups have been airing ads trying to define Harris on issues of crime and safety, with Democrats focusing on her record as a prosecutor and emphasizing that she hails from a border state. Republicans are trying to poke holes in her record and calling her “dangerously liberal.”