Former President Donald Trump is pointing to personal attacks at the Chicago Democratic National Committee (DNC) by former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as justification for disregarding the advice he’s received from allies, sticking to policy attacks, and cutting out insults on Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Did you see Barack Hussein Obama last night? He was taking shots at your president. And so was Michelle,” said Trump to supporters at a rally Wednesday in battleground North Carolina.
The former first lady, pointing to Trump, emphasized during her DNC address that “going small is petty, it’s unhealthy, quite frankly, it’s unpresidential.”
She also argued that “it’s his same old con: doubling down on ugly, misogynistic, racist lies as a substitute for real ideas and solutions that will actually make people’s lives better.”
Moments later, former President Obama called his White House successor “a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago.”
“It has been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually been getting worse now that he is afraid of losing to Kamala. There’s the childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession with crowd sizes,” Obama added while making a hand gesture seeming to imply he was mocking Trump’s manhood.
Trump, highlighting the verbal attacks on him from the prior evening, seemed to mock advice from GOP allies.
“You know they always say, ‘Sir, please stick to policy, don’t get personal,’” said Trump. “And yet they’re getting personal all night long, these people.”
“Do I still have to stick to policy?” Trump questioned his supporters in the crowd.
While he criticized Harris over critical issues like crime, inflation, and border security, in the past four weeks, Trump has also slammed Harris during news conferences, speeches, and social media posts.
Advisers to Trump aim to tamp down his personal attacks on Harris, focus on policy
Sources in Trump’s circle have said top advisers to the former president are aiming to persuade him to tamp down on his questions of the vice president’s racial identity and insults of her intelligence and instead focus on branding her an ultra-liberal.
Allies of Trump have publicly pitched the former president to refocus his attention.
“You’ve got to make this race not on personalities,” said former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy last week during an interview on “America’s Newsroom” on Fox News. “Stop questioning the size of her crowds and start questioning her position.”
McCarthy emphasized Trump has “a short time frame to do it, so don’t sit back. Get out there and start making the case.”
During an interview last week on Fox News’s “Special Report,” with Bret Baier, former ambassador to the U.N. and former Governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley — Trump’s top rival from the GOP presidential primaries earlier in the year — additionally had some unsolicited advice for her former boss.
Haley emphasized that she wants Trump to win the presidency and that “the campaign is not going to win talking about crowd sizes. It’s not going to win talking about what race Kamala Harris is. It’s not going to win talking about whether she’s dumb. It’s not. You can’t win on those things. The American people are smart. Treat them like they’re smart.”
At his Wednesday rally, Trump imitated allies who have urged him to avoid personal insults.
“Sir, you must stick to policy. You’ll win it on the border. You’ll win it with inflation. You’ll win it with your great military that you built,” said Trump.
Minutes later, he surveyed his crowd of supporters, asking, “Should I get personal or should I not get personal?”
Getting personal won by a clear margin. Polls indicate differently.
