(Bloomberg) -- Kamala Harris is hoping to seize on a fresh warning from Donald Trump’s former chief of staff to help regain momentum during the campaign’s final stretch as she embarks on a series of high-profile events.
Harris lambasted the former president after his longest-tenured White House chief of staff, John Kelly, said in an interview with the New York Times that Trump met “the general definition of a fascist” and had repeatedly suggested that Adolf Hitler did some good things. A separate story in The Atlantic published Tuesday reported that Trump said he needed “the kind of generals Hitler had” during a private conversation at the White House.
“It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler, the man who is responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans,” Harris said Wednesday in remarks at the Naval Observatory. “This is a window into who Donald Trump really is, from the people who know him best, from the people who worked with him, side by side in the Oval Office, and in the Situation Room.”
While Trump’s campaign has denied the reports, the allegations are a gift to Harris, whose campaign is courting disaffected Republicans and seizing on warnings from Kelly and other former top Trump aides casting him as an existential threat to democracy.
Still, Harris must prove that she can refocus the national conversation to Trump’s character with less than two weeks before Election Day. She’s often struggled outside of the campaign’s set pieces to set the narrative, with a traditional and conservative campaign strategy that struggles to earn headlines against the Republican nominee’s willingness to visit unconventional places and people, from a McDonald’s kitchen to a prime-time NFL game.
The vice president has a prime opportunity to amplify her preferred message when she heads to Pennsylvania on Wednesday for a CNN town hall being held in place of a second debate Trump has refused to hold. Her campaign held a call with former Republican and retired Brigadier General Steve Anderson to criticize Trump’s alleged statement earlier Wednesday, and the candidate herself is planning rallies with former President Barack Obama and ex-first lady Michelle Obama and a series of celebrity concerts in a push to juice turnout.
The final two weeks present a stark duality: Trump, nearly a decade into what has essentially been a continuous campaign for the presidency, is as polarizing as ever and also a largely known quantity, while Harris’ truncated three-month frenzy has sought to dig Democrats out of a polling hole created by inflation, the border crisis and President Joe Biden’s age.
The vice president’s aides, though, were salivating at the latest opportunity, particularly with surveys showing Trump has largely erased Harris’ post-convention polling bounce, leaving the race deadlocked.
Harris also plans to deliver a speech on the National Mall on Tuesday — one week before Election Day — laying out the case for her candidacy to voters, the Washington Post reported.
Blue Wall Blitz
Harris’ relentless travel schedule is aimed in part at avoiding the oversights of the Hillary Clinton campaign, where Trump seized victory by breaking through the Blue Wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The trio remain crucial, and are considered Harris’ best path to the White House.
“It has to be,” Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers said last week at a campaign stop, where he and fellow Democratic governors rallied supporters.
Trump’s campaign, which has already shrugged off primary challenges and felony convictions, has so far taken the same approach to the latest reports. Trump is expected to hold a pair of events Wednesday in Georgia, and on Sunday will look to draw media attention with a massive rally planned at Madison Square Garden.
In a sign of the narrowly fought contest, Trump traveled Tuesday to North Carolina, a state he carried twice but where Democrats have hoped for a breakthrough. “I think we are winning by a lot — I have a feeling we’re winning by a lot,” he said.
“I’d rather be climbing than sort of stagnating, and I think that’s what their candidates are doing,” Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia said in Howell, Michigan, last week. She predicted Harris would ultimately be bogged down by the unpopularity of Biden.
“People aren’t that stupid to think she hasn’t been in charge. She’s kind of getting away with it,” Capito said, adding that voters who blame Harris for current problems “are the ones that will put” Trump “over the top.”
Election Count
Democrats are banking on organizational prowess to help clinch victory, relying on a network of local field offices that have outpaced Republicans.
“There’s no reason to handwring,” Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro said.
Polls are showing narrow races in Senate contests across the three Blue Wall states.
The election, though, will only usher in a new phase of ballot counting and legal fights. It could take days to know the winner, and legal disputes could stretch on for weeks.
Harris, speaking Wednesday to NBC News, said the campaign was prepared. “Of course,” she said. “We have the resources and the expertise and the focus on that as well.”
Jim Messina, who managed Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection, told Bloomberg Television Monday it is “very unlikely we’re going to know on election night who wins.”
“And I promise you we’ll still be suing each other for a very long time after that,” he added.
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