The reelection campaign of US President Donald Trump plans to portray Biden's running mate, Kamala Harris, as a "power-hungry politician" who will use Biden as an "empty shell" to govern if the Democrats win the Oval Office, The Daily Beast reported, citing unnamed Trump allies.
“The playbook on Kamala is pretty simple,” a Trump campaign source told The Daily Beast. “Right now the message on Biden—and it’s the first effective frame the campaign has sustained on Biden—is that he’s an empty shell for the radical left. Kamala Harris is a power-hungry politician. She comes across as ruthless. So it’s a believable frame that she’d be running the administration for empty shell Joe Biden.”
The unnamed insider acknowledged that "anything Trump says about her will be [portrayed as] sexist", but insisted that should not - and would not - determine strategy that falls in line with the Trump administration slamming Biden's cognitive abilities and reiterating claims that the Democrat's campaign is a tool of the "radical left".
The Trump political machine is also reportedly working to invent "effective nicknames" for Harris, although a Trump campaign senior adviser, Katrina Pierson, is currently using the phrase "Phony Kamala".
Trump, during a coronavirus briefing at the White House, declared that Biden's newly-introduced VP was "the meanest, the most horrible, most disrespectful of anybody in the US Senate", saying that he was "surprised" Biden chose her as his running mate.
'Radical Left Frame'
Trump has repeatedly asserted that Biden is "brainwashed" and "taken over by the Radical left" who seek to "seize the real power", slamming what are considered to be Democratic ideas of defunding police while predicting that "bad things will happen" to the country if Biden wins the Oval Office.
In a video on Twitter posted moments after Biden announced his running mate, Trump's campaign denounced the presumptive Democratic nominee for not being "smart" enough to reject Harris after she "started running in the 2020 primary by rushing to the radical left", then attacking what he characterized as Biden's "racist policies" before voters "rejected her", "smartly spotting a phony".
During the Tuesday press conference at the White House, Trump claimed that Harris "is known as being just about the most liberal person in the US Senate".
Trump on Sen. Kamala Harris as VP: "She's known, from what I understand, as being just about the most liberal person in the U.S. Senate." pic.twitter.com/rdZTPdIq8Q
— The Recount (@therecount) August 11, 2020
Trump's claim was echoed by his campaign communications director, Tim Murtaugh, who said that Harris was "the most liberal member of the US Senate in 2019", referring to a GovTrack website rating and suggesting that she was "even more liberal than Bernie Sanders".
"The takeover of Joe Biden by the extreme left is now complete", he tweeted.
According to GovTrack, Kamala Harris was the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate in 2019.
— Tim Murtaugh - Download the Trump 2020 app today! (@TimMurtaugh) August 11, 2020
Even more liberal than Bernie Sanders.
The takeover of Joe Biden by the extreme left is now complete.
Link: https://t.co/BKpgp6lRsP pic.twitter.com/yWeRA5hIye
Biden voiced his VP choice earlier on Tuesday, praising Harris as a "fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country’s finest public servants". Harris, in response, stated that she is "honored" to join his campaign, and vowed to do "all it takes" to make Biden the next US commander-in-chief.
