Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said Sunday that if former President Donald Trump veers away from policy on the campaign trail and instead continues to criticize the personal features of Vice President Kamala Harris, he could lose the election to her.
“Donald Trump, the provocateur, the showman, may not win this election,” Graham said during an interview on Meet the Press.
Graham’s comments came in response to a question regarding Trump’s recent string of personal attacks on Harris, including saying that the vice president, who is half black and half Indian, “happened to turn black” in recent years and that she is “not smart.”
“Do you think former President Donald Trump should stop talking about Vice President Harris’s race and intelligence?” host Kristen Welker asked.
Graham responded that he and other Republicans, including Govs. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA), Ron DeSantis, and former presidential candidate Nikki Haley, need to begin campaigning for Trump while also encouraging him to focus on Trump’s policy proposals.
“In the advice-giving column,” Graham said, Trump “can win this election” if he sticks to policy discussions.
“His policies are good for America, and if you have a policy debate for president, he wins,” Graham said. “Donald Trump, the provocateur, the showman, may not win this election.”
Graham added that he is “looking for President Trump to show up in the last 80 days to define what he will do for our country.”
Trump’s controversial remarks on Harris’s race came in response to a question during a forum last month about criticisms from conservatives that she is a “DEI candidate.” The label is a reference to the diversity, equity, and inclusion framework that corporations and groups in many industries have adopted.
Critics gave Harris the label after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and she abruptly became the presumptive nominee following a rush of Democratic endorsements for her candidacy. Before choosing Harris as his runningmate in 2020, Biden said he preferred a vice president who was not white “and/or” male.
Graham is not alone in advising Trump to avoid disparaging Harris, as several Republican advisers have also urged the former president to stay on message.
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Trump was asked about the matter in Bedminster, New Jersey, last week, and he replied that he thinks he is also “entitled to personal attacks.”
“I don’t have a lot of respect for [Harris]. I don’t have a lot of respect for her intelligence, and I think she’ll be a terrible president, and I think it’s very important that we win,” Trump said. “And whether the personal attacks are good, bad, I mean, she certainly attacks me personally. She actually called me weird. ‘He’s weird.’ It was just a sound bite, and she called J.D. and I weird. He’s not weird. He was a great student at Yale. He went to Ohio State, graduated in two years at the top of his class, and all of these different things.”
