By Tony Diver
Donald Trump may lose the US election if he continues to act as a “provocateur” and a “showman”, a senior Republican ally has warned, amid calls for the former president to “reset” his campaign.
Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator who regularly plays golf with Trump, said he should focus on the “policy debate” with Kamala Harris, rather than launch personal attacks.
Trump’s campaign is now under pressure from some of its staunchest defenders to make major changes in the last 80 days of the campaign.
The 78-year-old has been criticised for calling Ms Harris “stupid” and claiming she had used her ethnicity as a campaigning tool.
On Sunday, Mr Graham joined Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran for the Republican 2024 nomination, and former advisers in pushing for a focus on policy.
“President Trump can win this election. His policies are good for America, and if you have a policy debate for president, he wins,” Mr Graham told NBC. “Donald Trump the provocateur, the showman, may not win this election.”
He added: “I’m looking for President Trump to show up in the last 80 days to define what he will do for our country, to fix broken borders, to lower inflation.”
The latest national polls show Ms Harris has pulled ahead of Trump by around two points, reversing the lead he held over Joe Biden before the president’s decision to drop out of the race on July 21.
Mr Biden’s electoral strategy involved winning the midwestern swing states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
But the latest surveys show Ms Harris also winning in some key “sun belt” swing states, which could offer her a different path to the 270 electoral college delegates required to win the White House.
She is ahead of Trump in North Carolina, which he won in 2020, and Arizona, where she is picking up support from Latino voters. Trump strategists are also reportedly concerned about a fall in support for their candidate from black voters and women.
A poll conducted by USA Today and Suffolk University released on Sunday found Ms Harris had shored up support among black voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania.
It comes after Trump suggested Ms Harris had previously downplayed her black heritage, and inflated it to win support when she became a politician. The vice-president’s father is Jamaican-American, while her mother is Indian.
“I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black and now she wants to be known as black,” Trump said last month. “So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she black?”
On Saturday, Trump doubled down on personal attacks against Ms Harris, referring to her as “Comrade Kamala” and claiming her father was a “Marxist economics professor”
While some Republicans have called on their candidate to focus more on inflation, far-Right influencers have said he should be more aggressive on immigration and crime.
Laura Loomer, a far-Right journalist, said “weak” surrogates were destroying the campaign, and warned Trump “needs to change FAST because we can’t talk about a stolen election for another 4 years”.
Candace Owens, another influencer, said a “MAGA civil war” had broken out, telling Trump: “I’m just not sure who is driving the MAGA bus any more. You’re losing that support from the people that believed in you … you need those people.”
This week, Democratic delegates will meet in Chicago for the party’s national convention, where they will hear speeches from Ms Harris, Mr Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
Ms Harris will face opposition from up to 100,000 pro-Palestine protesters, who will hold mass demonstrations in the city against the Biden administration’s support for Israel.
Police have said the event will not be a repeat of the 1968 party convention, which was also held in Chicago and was derailed by Vietnam War protesters. Trump will campaign in Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina during the convention.
Source: The Telegraph
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