TRUMP ISN'T GOING OFF MESSAGE -- HE'S SETTLED ON THE CENTRAL SMEAR OF HIS CAMPAIGN (updated)

The people running Donald Trump's presidential campaign are good at what they do -- so good, in fact, that they sold Politico on a lie about the campaign's strategy in the race against Kamala Harris. The lie is that the campaign intended to attack Harris strictly on issues and political philosophy, but then the candidate went off message:

Scrambling to put an end to Kamala Harris’ ascent, Donald Trump’s campaign and outside allies came up with a plan: Hit her on immigration, her record as a “liberal prosecutor” and as a “radical.”

It didn’t last long.

During a 34-minute question-and-answer appearance before the National Association of Black Journalists, Trump questioned Harris’ Black identity.

You know what Trump said:

Trump was asked about repeated Republican attacks ... characterizing [Harris] as a "DEI candidate" chosen because of her race and gender rather than her merits. Given the opening to denounce those accusations, Trump questioned Harris' race.

... "She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage," he said. "I didn't know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black."

"I don't know, is she Indian or is she Black?" he asked....

Just to be clear:

Harris has talked at length — including in her book, during her 2020 presidential campaign and in her time as vice president — about her multiracial heritage. Her father is Jamaican; her mother was Indian American.

Harris graduated from Howard University, joined a historically Black sorority and was a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

When Harris was in elementary school in the 1970s, she participated in a busing program meant to racially integrate schools in Berkeley. Twenty-one years ago, in 2003, when she won the San Francisco DA race, both the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times said she would be California's "first African American district attorney."

If Trump's remarks were a slip-up by an undisciplined candidate who was going against the campaign's carefully crafted strategy, then how do you explain this?

After the panel interview ... Trump and his campaign leaned into the messaging about Harris’ racial identity. Before his rally Wednesday night in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the campaign flashed on screen a graphic of Harris laughing, with a screenshot of a news headline referring to her as “Indian-American.” His attorney, Alina Habba, appeared to intentionally mispronounce Harris’ first name when she said “unlike you, Kamala, I know who my roots are. I know where I come from.”

Or this?

“So what he said, I thought it was hysterical,” [J.D.] Vance said. “I think he pointed out the fundamental chameleon-like nature of Kamala Harris. And you guys saw yesterday, she was in Georgia, and she put on a southern accent for a Georgia audience. She grew up in Vancouver. What the hell is going on here? She is not who she pretends to be.”

When asked by a reporter explicitly if he questions whether Harris is Black, Vance said, “What I question is why she presents a different posture depending on which audience that she’s in front of.”

This is particularly shameless, of course:

So ironic that a guy who completely reinvented himself and went from “Trump is hitler” to “trump is the best ever” when he ran for senate would say this.

— Peter Henlein (@SwissWatchGuy) August 1, 2024

Also, J.D. Vance is on his third name -- he was born James Donald Bowman, then his name was changed to James David Hamel after his mother's third husband adopted him. In the early 2010s, he wrote for David Frum's Frum Forum under the name J.D. Hamel. So who is he, really?

Well, obviously he's a product of broken homes and multiple parents, stepparents, and parental figures. That's okay. It's also okay to have parents from both Jamaica and India, and to have been raised in both the U.S. and Canada. (Hell, Ted Cruz was born in Canada!)

Other Republicans are playing their assigned roles by fretting over Trump's remarks in the media:

"It was awful," one House Republican said of the interview, telling Axios it raised concerns about whether Trump can contain his impulses while running against the first woman, Black and Asian American vice president....

"That was not a demonstration on how to win over undecided voters," another House Republican said.

But I assume Trump thinks it will win over undecided voters. Trump isn't a smart man in most ways, but he has a cornered rat's instinct for fighting. If this tactic works, undecided voters will half-hear about it, and possibly find themselves repeating it: Well, they say she's a phony. They say she pretends to be one thing in front of one audience and another thing the next day in front of a different audience. The idea that Harris "happened to turn Black" only recently might seem plausible to low-information voters: They don't know about her college days or her early political career. And many of them will be white people who don't have a lot of acquaintances with multi-racial identities.

But Harris is running a smart race. I expect her to have an effective strategy to neutralize this -- and I don't think we'll have to wait long to see how she responds, because she's not an old-school Democrat who lets attacks fester.

Nevertheless, we can stop telling ourselves that the Trump campaign is still searching for a way to campaign against Harris. The campaign has a plan now, and this is it. This is the official strategy. When Trump said these things, he was on message.

*****

Here's something you need to remember: Republicans think invocations of identity (apart from straight, white, male, and/or Christian) are a scam, and they think Democrats know this. Here's a clip of the Daily Wire's Michael Knowles arguing -- I'm not making this up -- that Pete Buttigieg might not really be gay:

MICHAEL KNOWLES (HOST): Put another nickel in the Pete-is-not-gay conspiracy theory jar. I've always taken Pete at his word that he is a homosexual. However, I have some friends including a homosexual friend of mine, Spencer Klavan, who has said for a long time that Pete Buttigieg is not really gay.

That's his favorite conspiracy theory. And I said, I don't know, man. You know? I don't know. And he said, no. I'm telling you. He's — and his argument was that Pete Buttigieg, I've met many people like this, he's a real striver. You know? He was a Harvard guy, real ambitious....

And — but he has this problem, which is he's a straight white guy. And, again, I'm not saying he's a straight white guy. I'm saying this is the conspiracy theory. He's a straight white guy. So he's got this problem. Right? He's over there at Harvard. He says, shoot, man. I'm not gonna rise very far in liberal politics if I'm the most evil type of person in the world, a straight white guy. So I need something. I need some struggle.

They're sure we think it's all a scam. So whether or not they can persuade anyone outside their circle that Kamala Harris is faking an absolutely legitimate part of her background, they find it extremely plausible that she would engage in race fakery. So expect your right-wing relatives to post many Kamala Harris = Rachel Dolezal memes on Facebook between now and November.

*****

UPDATE: And here come the memes.

I hate these people.

*****

UPDATE: This is good:

Donald,

Kamala Harris is both Black, and Indian. You can be two things at once.

Kind of like how you are both a rapist and a racist. pic.twitter.com/d50TfzRPtp

— Harris War Room (Text JOIN to 30330) (@HarrisWarRoom) July 31, 2024

Boom!