A version of this news analysis originally appeared in the Inside Politics newsletter, out Fridays. Sign up here to get it first to your inbox.
Donald Trump came to Bojangles Coliseum Wednesday for his first rally since Joe Biden said he wouldn’t run for reelection.
Compared to his mostly subdued speech (at least for the first part) at last week's Republican National Convention, it was a blistering assault on the presumptive Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.
But the speech was also notable for what wasn’t in it, specifically attacks based on race and gender.
No talk of her being a DEI candidate.
No talk of her not having her own biological children.
No Willie Brown.
All have been circulating in right-wing circles in the last week.
Perhaps Trump decided himself he wouldn’t go there — or perhaps his staff implored him not to.
How long can he keep himself from going there, given he’s been happy to go low before — launching the Obama birth certificate lie, making fun of a disabled reporter and mocking Rosie O’Donnell’s weight and looks?
Trump appears to have settled on "Lyin’ Kamala" as his new nickname for the vice president. He spelled it out, to make clear that he wasn't calling her a lion. That appears to be a reference to her vouching for Biden’s mental fitness.
“For three and a half years Harris shamelessly lied to the public to cover up Joe Biden’s mental unfitness claiming that Crooked Joe was at the absolute top of his game,” Trump said during the rally.
Trump, of course, spewed multiple falsehoods during his speech, such as an incorrect claim that Harris supports abortion “even after birth – the execution of a baby.”
And he called her a “radical left lunatic” and “one of the worst prosecutors in history.”
But race and gender is, for now, not on the Trump set list.
(Except for perhaps Trump’s repeated mispronunciation of her name. He says Ka-MAL-uh instead of Comma-luh, as her name is pronounced. That’s been called racist.)
So what did Trump say? And will it work?
He spent much of his speech talking about inflation and the border.
Harris was given the assignment of addressing the root causes of immigration from Central American countries, a job the media and the GOP described as the administration’s “Border Czar.” Harris has been walking away from the informal, sweeping job title, with an occasional assist from the media.
Even though crossings are down, the border will likely be a vulnerability for Harris over the next 100 days. Same with inflation.
In addition to criticizing her for allegedly covering up Biden’s mental decline, he also mocked the Democrats for being undemocratic in picking Harris, who received zero primary votes for president in 2020 and 2024.
When asked about the race and gender-tinged attacks, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said it’s a nonissue, according to the New York Times: “I don’t know if it’s off-limits, but it’s not something that we’ve done. So, it is not even on our radar.”
I’m not sure these issues will resonate as the nation moves past the Biden presidency.
The vice president’s biggest vulnerability didn’t come during Trump’s speech, but from a short video before it: clips of Harris during her ill-fated 2020 run for president, when she ran as one of the more liberal Democratic candidates.
That’s when she backed Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All Plan, which would end private insurance. She later changed her position to call for a government-run health care system that also had private insurance as competition.
She also raised her hand at a debate when asked if she supported decriminalizing illegal border crossings and whether she would give free health care to people who came into the country illegally.
Many voters have probably forgotten about all that.
Will it matter now?
