In the final stretch before the 2024 electionVice President Kamala Harris has embarked on a three-state tour through battleground states to court undecided voters — with a particular focus on those who supported the former U.N. ambassador. Nikki Haley during the Republican presidential primary earlier this year.
Harris’ speech was remarkably similar to the foreign policy warning about Trump that Haley issued when she was a student. presidential candidate.
“If Donald Trump “If we were president, Vladimir Putin would be sitting in kyiv — and understanding what that would mean for America and our standing in the world,” Harris told voters in Oakland County, Michigan, on Monday. Asserting that Trump would cede Ukraine to Russia, Harris added: “that signals to the Russian president that he can get away with what he did. Look at the map. Poland would be next.”
As a candidate in Michigan earlier this year, Haley warned of the potential consequences of Trump’s failure to treat Putin as a threat.
“Once they take Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics will be next,” Haley said. “These were NATO countries that immediately put America at war.”
Harris and Haley also stressed the need to support U.S. allies, denouncing Trump and Republicans’ views on isolationism that they say would bring the United States closer to war.
“Isolationism is exactly what Donald Trump is pushing to pull out of NATO and abandon our friends,” Harris said Monday. “Isolationism is not isolation. It is not isolation. It will not protect us from danger in terms of national security.”
Haley criticized Trump in similar terms. “Look at the situation that the Republican Party is putting us in that Donald Trump is encouraging: it’s this isolationist approach,” Haley told Michigan voters earlier this year. “America can never be so arrogant as to think we don’t need friends.”
On Monday, Harris called Trump’s dealings with dictators a threat to democracy, a point Haley also emphasized on the campaign trail.
Trump, Harris said, “is very clearly capable of being manipulated by favors and flattery, including from dictators and autocrats around the world, and America knows that is not our position.” .
The former U.N. ambassador said in January of Trump: “You don’t make friends with dictators and thugs who want to kill us. » She added: “When I was in the administration with him at the UN, I literally had to sit him down and tell him to stop this affair he was having with Putin.”
Harris and Haley may be on opposite ends of the political spectrum, but Harris is leveraging their shared views on foreign policy and America’s role in the world to help win over undecided moderate and independent Republican voters in suburban areas.
In counties where Harris campaigned Monday in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Haley received tens of thousands of votes in the Republican primaries — even after dropping out of the presidential race. A senior Harris campaign official said the campaign believed it was an indication of suburban voters’ dissatisfaction with Trump. The vice president is counting on Republicans to help her woo these voters, including former Rep. Liz Cheney, an outspoken critic of Trump who has supported Harris and campaigned with her this week. Harris also followed the trail with other Republicans and former Trump aides earlier this month.
In 2020, Joe Biden won Michigan by less than 155,000 votes. In her race against Trump in the primary, Haley won by nearly 55,000 votes in Oakland County, Michigan.
Haley dropped out of the presidential race before the Pennsylvania and Wisconsin primaries, but nevertheless, in Chester County, Pennsylvania, Haley received 9,000 votes, or about 24% of the GOP primary vote in the county. President Biden’s margin in Pennsylvania was just 80,000 votes in 2020, and it was even smaller in Wisconsin – just 20,000 votes. Haley received 9,000 votes in Waukesha County, Wisconsin.
While Harris tries to court Haley’s former supporters, Haley herself is ready to campaign for Trump, despite her warnings about him months ago.
According to a source familiar with the planning, Haley’s team has given the Trump campaign dates of availability for a possible joint campaign event, and the two teams are working to schedule an appearance before Election Day.
Last month, Haley told CBS News’ “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” that she was happy to be helpful to the campaign if needed.
“For me, the stark contrast between the Trump and Harris administrations is what led me to say, yes, I have to, you know, I’m going to vote with Trump and I’m going to speak at the convention,” he said. -She. “Do I agree with his style? Do I agree with his approach? Do I agree with his communications? No. When I look at the policies and how they affect my family and how I think they’re going to affect the country, that’s where I go back and look at the differences.”
In an interview with “Fox and Friends” last week, Trump responded “I’ll do what I have to do” when asked if he would seek Haley’s help, but reiterated that he “beat her badly”.
