Harris adopts Trump’s playbook as she targets his age and competence
The Democratic nominee is echoing some of the attacks her opponent directed at Biden as she questions the former president’s stamina and fitness to be commander in chief.
And that same week, she repeatedly cited a Politico report claiming Trump had withdrawn from some interview negotiations due to “exhaustion” to argue that the former president doesn’t have the stamina to serve as commander in chief.
“When he does answer a question or speak at a rally, have you noticed he tends to go off-script and ramble? And generally, for the life of him, cannot finish a thought,” Harris said after bringing up his alleged exhaustion during an Atlanta rally. “He has called it the ‘weave,’” she said, referring to the way Trump says he weaves disparate topics together in his campaign speeches. “But I think we here would call it nonsense.”
The 60-year-old Harris has flipped the script on her 78-year-old opponent since becoming the Democratic nominee when it comes to questions of aging and acuity — deploying the same playbook that Trump and his allies once used against President Joe Biden before he withdrew from the race this summer and endorsed Harris.
For months, Trump and his allies relentlessly taunted the president about his age — portraying the 81-year-old commander in chief as a confused, doddering and diminished figure while Trump boasted about his own vitality and what he claims is his strong performance on a cognitive test.
The White House vociferously pushed back on those characterizations of Biden, sometimes lashing out at reporters who questioned Biden’s ability to do the job. Aides and allies — including Harris — insisted he was mentally sharp even after high-profile moments when he confused the names of foreign leaders, appeared to face difficulties exiting the stage or struggled to maintain his train of thought in public appearances. Biden withdrew from the race in July after a disastrous June debate performance that raised alarms about his age and acuity.
But Harris is portraying Trump not only as old, but also as unstable, unhinged and intent on amassing “unchecked power” — a figure whose thirst for control would endanger both democracy and the safety of the American people.
Trump has slashed back at Harris’s attacks — dismissing reports about his exhaustion as false while telling reporters that Harris “doesn’t have the energy of a rabbit.” The Trump campaign mocked Harris last week for forgoing major campaign events on Tuesday and Wednesday as she prepared for an NBC interview and a CNN town hall. And they pointed to a recent analysis by the Wall Street Journal showing that the former president has done far more media appearances than Harris since she became the Democratic nominee.
“The truth is President Trump has been running laps around Kamala Harris on the campaign trail and has sat down for nearly three times as many interviews as she has,” Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “President Trump has more energy, and a harder work ethic, than anyone in politics.”
A Harris campaign aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share candid insights, rejected the idea that the Harris campaign is now doing to Trump what the Trump campaign had previously done to Biden, describing that characterization as a false equivalency.
Trump, this person said, attempted to diagnose Biden with cognitive impairments like dementia, and claimed the White House was engaged in a massive coverup — all with no evidence. Harris and her team are not diagnosing Trump with any illness, this person added; rather, they are simply making a broader argument that Trump is not fit to serve as president. In their view, they are tying together a range of facts — including Trump’s refusal to release his medical records; his comments labeling his opponents the “enemy from within”; and the many Republicans and former Trump administration officials who have come forward to say he is a threat to democracy.
For Harris, there is the added benefit of deliberately trolling Trump and getting under his skin, in part because he often takes the bait. The former president defined the terms of the presidential contest, making it a referendum on age and fitness for office, and now the Harris team is just playing on his turf, the Harris aide said.
Dan Pfeiffer, a former Barack Obama adviser, noted that the attacks are also a way for Harris to undercut Americans’ perceptions of Trump’s strength.
“Trump has made himself vulnerable to this, not just by being old, but by hiding from the press and acting in a way where you’d have a family meeting if your uncle said some of those things,” Pfeiffer said. “It’s enjoyable to watch him hoisted on his own petard, but this is also [about how] politics in every race comes down to strength in some way, shape or form.”
Harris’s campaign — particularly her “KamalaHQ” social media accounts — have frequently drawn attention to Trump’s meandering speeches and often confusing answers in interviews. And many of the vice president’s surrogates are striking the same themes on the campaign trail. Biden questioned Trump’s mental stability after he turned his town hall into the impromptu dance-athon: “He stood on the stage for 30 minutes and danced,” Biden said recently. “What’s wrong with this guy?”
Billionaire Mark Cuban has called Trump’s proposals for sweeping tariffs “lunacy” and “gibberish” — declaring at a pro-Harris rally in Wisconsin that he believes Trump “used to understand how tariffs work” but adding, “I don’t know what happened to him.”
And at a rally in Nevada last week, Obama called out Trump for recent statements like his description of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol as a “day of love.” “You would be worried if your grandpa started acting like this,” Obama said.
Harris has also sought to raise questions about Trump’s well-being by drawing attention to the scant medical information he has provided to the public during the campaign. Her campaign recently released a detailed letter from her doctor describing her as possessing “the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Though it was not a full medical report, the campaign’s decision to release the letter was a deliberate effort to draw a contrast with Trump, who has refused to release his medical reports since entering the presidential race.
Polling on the question is mixed, however, with voters saying Harris is more mentally and physically fit to be president, but also saying they thought Trump was more likely to be a strong leader than Harris.
A September ABC-Ipsos poll after the Sept. 10 debate with Trump and Harris found that on the question of who is more mentally sharp and physically fit, potential voters favored Harris. Forty-eight percent of Americans said Harris was more mentally sharp, versus 38 percent who said Trump was. On the question of physical fitness, the difference was even more stark — 58 percent said Harris was more fit, compared with 26 percent who said Trump was.
But a Fox News poll released on Oct. 16 found more likely voters said Trump is a “strong leader” compared with those asked about Harris, with 55 percent saying Trump is and 46 percent saying Harris is.
Rich Thau, president of Engagious and moderator of the Swing Voter Project — which conducts monthly online focus groups with adults who live in competitive states — who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 but Biden in 2020, said that he is unsure that Harris’s argument that Trump is experiencing cognitive decline will help in the closing days of the race. But some voters are clearly questioning whether Trump’s instincts make him dangerous if he once again holds the powers of the commander in chief, he said.
Thau noted that in two focus groups that he recently moderated, he did not specifically probe about Trump’s age or acuity — and that the topic did not come up organically.
“What did come up were concerns about how people’s rights might be violated,” Thau said. “It was more about the damage he could do and how he could harm his enemies than it was about concerns about age or mental stability.”
Thau added that some of the undecided voters said that if Trump did something truly outlandish between now and Election Day, that might help tip them toward Harris, but when he pressed them on what crazy thing would have to happen, they didn’t know.
“Trump’s daily behavior — they’re either not paying attention to it, or it has become so normalized that it’s built into the price of voting for Trump,” he said. “I’m not sure what Harris is saying is getting through to them. There’s a huge gap between what she says and what’s actually heard and what he says and what’s actually heard.”
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