Trump and Vance’s ‘divide and conquer’ strategy on the campaign trail: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the policy deskevening bulletin that brings you the latest reporting and analysis from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill from the NBC News Politics team.

In today’s edition, we talk to JD Vance about how he’s trying to broaden the appeal of the Republican ticket and explore why Democrats are feeling newly energized in the critical battleground state of Georgia. Plus, senior political analyst Chuck Todd explains why Harris thinks so much about media strategy.

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Vance takes on Trump in a new interview

By Henry J. Gomez, Alec Hernández and Jillian Frankel

A week ago, the rift between Donald Trump and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp appeared irreparable, with the former president’s merciless mockery of the popular Republican battleground state posing a potentially fatal threat to his campaign.

Then JD hired Vance Kemp.

Kemp was targeted along with his wife a few hours after the phone call bad Trump attackswas on Fox News He has publicly declared his support for the GOP ticket. Soon it was Trump thanked the governor for kind words.

In an interview with NBC News on a campaign plane Tuesday night, Vance downplayed any role he might have played in brokering a truce, claiming he was one of many important voices in Kemp’s ear. But Vance also described a strategy Trump has blessed that he can think with or appeal to people in ways Trump can’t.

After their first few campaign speeches together, Vance recalled, Trump “basically said, ‘I trust you. Unless there’s a really big event, we should both be in different places…divide and conquer.”

“We’re each trying to talk to different people in different ways and we’re each trying to run the race as best we can,” Vance added. “And he obviously sets the tone and sets the policy, and I’m just trying to help.”

Reconciling Abortion Differences: In the interview, Vance also touched on how he reconciled some of his political positions with Trump’s, especially on abortion. Vance campaigned against a constitutional amendment passed last year in Ohio that would have codified abortion rights in the state. That too in the past expressed his support for federal abortion restrictions.

But after joining the GOP ticket, Vance deferred to Trump, who said he wanted to leave the issue up to the states.

“I don’t think of it as being confident in your values,” Vance said. “I am pro-life and I am interested in this issue. I want to save as many babies as possible. Here, too, I remember that the voters make these decisions, and I advocated very strongly for the voters to vote no. [in Ohio]and gave us our asses. And so I think all of us who are pro-life have to kind of take a step back and say, ‘How can we treat the American people here better?’ we have to say.

The RFK effect: Vance also laughed off memes last week suggesting that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who backed Trump, was the Republican vice-presidential nominee.

On Kennedy’s famous vaccine skepticism, Vance said that her three children received “standard immunizations” but that she liked Kennedy’s “general skepticism” of the health care bureaucracy.

“That doesn’t mean I agree with him on every point, but I think we should be a little more willing to challenge public health authorities post-Covid,” Vance said.

Read the interview, including Vance’s response to last week’s awkward trip to a bakery in Georgia →

Harris gives Democrats new hope in Georgia

Sahil Kapoor, Alex Seitz-Wald, Jonathan Allen and Nnamdi Egwuonwu

Georgia is front and center on the presidential campaign trail this week, with Kamala Harris and Tim Waltz kicking off a bus tour scheduled to culminate with a solo Harris rally in the Savannah area today.

Joe Biden won Georgia by less than 12,000 votes over Trump in 2020, becoming the first Democrat to carry the longtime GOP stronghold in nearly three decades. Now it’s up to Harris to prove it wasn’t a fluke by keeping the state in the blue column.

Harris is a better demographic fit than Biden in Georgia, which has the highest percentage of black voters of any state running for president. His electorate is also younger than most presidential battlegrounds, and while Biden has struggled with younger voters this cycle, they seem more receptive to Harris so far. The state also has rapidly growing Asian American populationLeaning on the Democrats and helping the party in close races.

To win Georgia, Harris will have to repeat the formula that powered Biden and Sen. Raphael Warnock: increase voter turnout and mobilize Democrats in blue Atlanta; Putting big dots on the board in the city’s populous suburbs, full of educated voters skeptical of Trump; and losing less limited his margin of defeat in the state’s vast and solidly red rural areas, where he could have given him 16 electoral votes.

Gwinnett County Republican Party Chairman Sammy Baker acknowledged that Biden’s replacement with Harris improved the Democrats’ fortunes in Georgia.

“I was very, very comfortable that it wouldn’t be an easy win, it would be a 4 or 5 point win. “I think it’s going to be a little bit tougher now because I think he’s energized a few Democrats that weren’t energized before and they seem a little bit more active,” Baker said.

Read more about the state of the game in Georgia →

2008 redux? Democrats sense that the newfound energy lies outside of Georgia. Natasha Korecki reports that some in the party are going so far as to say that Harris has rekindled the magic of Barack Obama’s historic 2008 election. More →

How Harris overthinks media strategy

By Chuck Todd

Among the dumbest news cycles, every campaign is a “debate on debates” and debates over media coverage and output. This is a conversation that the media and politicians are more interested in than the general public. Of course, these internal debates matter because they affect what the rest of the country’s voters see about the presidential candidates, either on the debate stage or through the media filter.

Let me begin with the first major mistake of the Harris campaign since being selected as the Democratic nominee. Now they raised the stakes for him first sit-down interview. More words and phrases will be vetted simply because the campaign and the candidate are acting as if doing these interviews is as interesting to them as going to the dentist’s office.

I know many Democrats are allergic to everything Trump, but one thing I think more candidates will learn from his primary campaign in 2016 is that he treated all media as good for him, whether he thought the interviewer was friendly or neutral. or a competitor. Whenever he would say something angry or controversial in one sitting, he would do something completely novel (and equally remarkable) in another, which greatly reduced the impact of all his interviews.

All the Harris campaign needs to do is give media interviews one day a week and saturate the landscape. As we all know, there is nowhere to go anymore to approach 100% media saturation.

If he did five or six rounds one day a week with a sprinkling of all kinds of media outlets, no interview would overshadow any news cycle and would likely have a chance to reach a more diverse audience. on a regular schedule.

By the way, these interviews would also help him prepare for the debate. Trump should use the same strategy. Like it or not, we live in a fragmented media environment, and that requires breaking down how a candidate performs. This should be the comprehensive strategy outlined above.

Read more from Chuck →

That’s all for the Policy Desk for now. If you have feedback – like it or not – send us an email politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.com

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