With former President Donald Trump poised to take a triumphant victory lap at the Republican National Convention on Thursday, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris took aim at the GOP’s far right-wing Project 2025 as a sleeper issue that could play a big role in the coming White House campaign.
As Trump prepped for a hero’s welcome from Republicans after dramatically surviving an assassination attempt, President Biden’s top lieutenant slammed Project 2025 as the unpopular and extremist blueprint for a second Trump term.
Showing off her prosecutorial chops, Harris denounced Trump and his newly minted vice presidential running mate J.D. Vance for pulling a bait and switch on the American public by claiming they stand for national unity.
“[Trump] wants to distract attention away from his record and his Project 2025 plan,” Harris told a roaring crowd of supporters in Fayetteville, N.C. “We are not buying it. If you claim you stand for unity, you have to do more than just say the word.”
Harris, who is relishing her prosecutorial role as an anti-Trump attack dog, ticked off a laundry list of radical right-wing proposals in Project 2025, a 900-page document drawn up by Trump insiders at the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation.
The veep said it includes what she framed as a backdoor nationwide ban on abortion in the form of calls to enforce a century-old law that bans sending abortion medication in the mail.
Project 2025 also calls for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and dramatic new tax cuts for billionaires and big corporations.
It calls for a wide-ranging transformation of the federal bureaucracy with nonpartisan civil servants to be replaced by pro-Trump ideologues with the power to dismantle environmental protections and other rules that protect ordinary Americans from the whims of powerful corporations.
The document also accuses liberals of brainwashing generations of American young people with messages supporting diversity and attacking racism.
As recently as last month, Project 2025 was little known outside of wonky policy circles.
But it has exploded in notoriety and started trending wildly when Hollywood starlet Taraji P. Henson urged viewers of the recent 2024 BET Awards to look it up.
Trump has sought to distance himself from the project, rightly fearing that its specific unpopular proposals could supply ammunition to his Democratic opponents.
But he hasn’t said what policy prescriptions he objects to. The plan was concocted by several of his top loyalists who served in his first administration. And Trump has been captured on video speaking warmly about the controversial plan.
At the RNC in Milwaukee, Trump has said he plans to deliver a call for unity in his first major speech since he narrowly cheated death when an assassin opened fire on him at a campaign rally last weekend.
It remained to be seen if he will follow through on his vow to scrap what he said was going to be a red-meat political attack on Biden, whom Trump blames for mishandling the economy and allowing an “invasion” of migrants across the southern border.
Insiders say he was personally tweaking the speech as late as early Thursday evening.
Former First Lady Melania Trump was expected to make a rare appearance at the convention to cheer on her husband as he launches a third straight presidential run.
Trump’s coronation amounts to a stunning comeback for a man who many had written off after he lost to Biden in the 2020 race and encouraged a crowd of his extremist supporters to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in a failed effort to overturn that defeat.
He rebuilt his iron grip on the Republican Party and cruised to victory in the GOP primaries, easily besting once-promising rivals like Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. They were forced to eat crow by endorsing him at the convention.
He shrugged off four criminal indictments and even his conviction on 34 felony counts in the recent Manhattan hush money trial.
Trump’s aura of invincibility with his followers was only burnished when he narrowly avoided being killed by a would-be assassin at the rally in western Pennsylvania. He was lightly wounded on the ear and has taken to wearing an oversized bandage, although his campaign refuses to release medical records or details about his treatment.
Trump emerges from the RNC as the clear front-runner to beat Biden with polls showing him ahead in all of the battleground states that will likely determine the winner of their rematch for the White House.
Biden, meanwhile, is grappling with rising calls from Democratic leaders to quit the race after he stunned voters with a disjointed and often incoherent performance in a debate with Trump last month.
If Biden does step down, Harris would be the heavy favorite to take over the mantle of the campaign and become the first Black woman to lead a major party presidential ticket, although she might face some opposition from rival Democrats.
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