On Monday afternoon, former President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, was on Fox Business discussing the state of Trump’s campaign with former Trump adviser Larry Kudlow.
You’d assume the two Trump allies would have been heaping lavish praise on their favorite candidate. Instead, it was some tough love.
Conway was pointed in criticizing Trump’s attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris, which have centered on everything from her intelligence to her race.
“The winning formula for President Trump is very plain to see,” said the first woman to run a winning presidential campaign. “It’s fewer insults, more insights, and that policy contrast.”
Kudlow agreed.
“Again,” he said, “I think personal insults of her are not a good idea, really not a good idea. It’s a distraction, it’s unnecessary, it’s off-message.”
Conway offered some optimism for an upcoming interview between Trump and X owner Elon Musk, suggesting it would be a great opportunity for Trump to showcase his “policy contrast.”
Bless her heart.
The Trump/Musk glitch-ridden livestream, in which Trump waxed poetic about Harris’ so-called resemblance to his wife Melania, among other nonsensical things, was not the contrast Conway was hoping for.
Instead, it was a fact-resistant, grievance-riddled, sloppy mess of an interview between two thin-skinned billionaires who were all too happy to learn they hated the same people. Needless to say, it was light on policy.
Since President Joe Biden dropped off the Democratic ticket and Harris stepped on, Trump’s 2.0 campaign has been plagued by unforced errors, lackluster messaging, whiffed attempts at defining her, lame name-calling, and embarrassing contrasts in enthusiasm and momentum.
He’s tried, for some inexplicable reason, litigating her race, suggesting she only recently “happened to turn Black.”
He’s tried insulting her competence and her intelligence.
He’s bizarrely accused her of faking her massive crowd sizes with artificial intelligence — and we all know how important crowd size is to him.
And on Tuesday, an official Trump campaign account on X posted a racist meme about migrants.
As for her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, they’ve tried attacking his service record. They’re calling him “Tampon Tim,” for his state’s law requiring public schools to provide free menstrual products to students. Trump has tried calling him “Comrade Walz.”
If recent polls are any indication, none of this is working to boost Trump’s campaign, especially in the all-important swing states, where Harris keeps getting better and better news — like the latest Cook Report, which has Harris up or tied with Trump in all but one swing state.
Or the recent New York Times/Siena College poll, showing Harris is tightening the margins with one of Trump’s core constituencies — white working-class voters in swing states.
Policy areas ripe for contrast
But despite Conway’s nudges, as well as mounting criticism from other Republicans like former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and even Peter “Pimp Ladies” Navarro, Trump seems determined to avoid real policy arguments.
What’s surprising — and likely infuriating for many Republicans up for reelection in down-ballot races — is that there are plenty of policy areas to go after.
Trump and Vance have attempted to pin the migrant crisis at the border on Harris, but thus far haven’t successfully pressured her to answer for her role inside the Biden administration.
They’ve hammered the economy, with Trump even predicting a looming depression, but not to any visible impact on her numbers.
But they’ve ignored some obvious low-hanging fruit when it comes to Walz, a huge missed opportunity to put the new Dem ticket on defense.
First, abortion. While Republicans are rightly painted as extremists on women’s reproductive rights — representing only a fringe minority of voters who want abortion completely banned — Minnesota’s laws are outside the mainstream, too.
A new statute in Minnesota does not include any specific prohibitions on abortion at any stage of pregnancy. A majority of voters believe abortion should be legal, with some restrictions, including on weeks. A majority of abortion rights supporters say how long a woman has been pregnant should matter in determining legality, and support for legal abortion diminishes at later stages of pregnancy.
Minnesota doesn’t require parental consent for minors. National polling shows overwhelming support for parental consent.
Minnesota’s progressive transgender laws — making the state a “trans refuge,” where children can receive gender-affirming intervention and the courts can have “temporary emergency jurisdiction” during cross-state custody disputes if a child has been unable to get gender-affirming care, is not nationally popular. A majority of voters oppose gender-affirming care for minors, as well as trans women participating in sports against biological girls.
On taxes — remember taxes? Republicans used to care about them. A lot. Minnesota’s got the highest corporate tax rate in the U.S. It’s also got the sixth-highest individual income tax top rate. It seems like this might matter to people.
How about a meme or a riff on any of this stuff? Do Walz and Harris want to make America more like Minnesota? It’s a fair question that neither have had to answer because Trump prefers doling out dumb nicknames to drilling down on policy contrasts.
Whether he just doesn’t care about the policy, or he’s too old and tired to get substantive and specific, Trump’s campaign is suffering because he refuses to take it — and voters — seriously.
And they’re responding in kind.
S.E. Cupp is the host of “S.E. Cupp Unfiltered” on CNN.
Send letters to letters@suntimes.com.
Get Opinions content delivered to your inbox.