Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Sunday that he thinks Vice President Kamala Harris will be easier to defeat in the November election than Democratic President Joe Biden, who earlier in the day withdrew as his party’s nominee.
“Harris will be easier to beat than Joe Biden,” Trump told CNN.
Trump and his campaign later also attacked Biden and Harris on social media, saying Biden was unfit to continue as president.
Biden ended his campaign on Sunday after his fellow Democrats lost confidence in his mental acumen and ability to defeat Trump. Biden endorsed Harris to replace him as the party’s nominee.
Biden faced growing doubts about his re-election chances after a weak and faltering performance in a televised debate against Trump late last month.
On Sunday, Trump said on his Truth Social platform that Biden “wasn’t fit to run for president and he’s certainly not fit to serve.”
Other top Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, have also said Biden is unfit to serve as president and complete his term should he withdraw as the Democratic presidential nominee. Johnson specifically called on Biden to resign.
Trump and Biden were mostly tied in the polls, but after the debate, some polls showed Trump narrowly ahead of the president in the race for the November election.
The Trump campaign has already begun discussions about how it will reallocate campaign resources in the face of the possibility of Biden’s departure, a source with direct knowledge of the matter said Sunday.
Since any alternative Democratic candidate would likely have different strengths and weaknesses than Biden, the person said, the president’s ouster would require a rethinking of where to spend advertising dollars and where to deploy resources more generally.
Trump campaign advisers and allies have publicly told reporters that they are not worried about facing Harris because they can easily relate her to Biden’s record in office, particularly on immigration and inflation. They say they will try to paint Harris and any of the other candidates being proposed as Democratic alternatives as to the left of Biden on various policies.
In a statement after Biden resigned, the Trump campaign said Harris was Biden’s “chief proxy.” The campaign said Biden and Harris owned each other’s records and “there is no distance between them.”
The Republican National Committee’s official YouTube channel released a two-minute video Sunday afternoon in which she attacked Harris over immigration policy, saying she had neglected the issue.
In recent weeks, the Trump campaign and some of his allies have launched preemptive political attacks on Harris to try to discredit her amid talk that she could replace Biden on the party’s 2024 presidential ticket.
In March 2021, Biden said Harris would lead efforts with Mexico and Central American states to address illegal immigration.
Republicans seized on it, accusing her of failing to stem the flow of millions of migrants crossing illegally into the United States, even though she was never directly responsible for securing the southern border.
