Donald Trump heads west on Thursday morning for campaign events in Arizona, Nevada and California, where his campaign believes it can expose Kamala Harris as a woman who is warm on vibes but light on policies.
While pundits were quick to declare Tuesday’s debate a victory for Harris, those in her inner circle believe most viewers missed out on how the Democratic nominee would tackle crippling prices or secure the border if she won power.
And that will be Trump’s message when he addresses supporters in Tucson on Thursday afternoon.
Senior campaign adviser Tim Murtaugh said Trump would attack his rival for being vague on important issues during the debate.
“It’s a contrast,” he said of Trump’s plan for the coming days.
Former President Donald Trump heads to the western US region on Thursday, aiming to expose gaps in Kamala Harris’s policy agenda. Debate viewers said they knew more about his governing plans than hers in an online poll conducted for DailyMail.com
“It’s that he has a plan to make life more affordable for ordinary people. She doesn’t.
“In fact, he is hiding what his true plans are.”
And he dismissed headlines about Harris’s victory as nothing more than “journalism.”
James Johnson, co-founder of JL Partners, said his argument was confirmed by a snap poll of independent voters he conducted for DailyMail.com immediately after the debate.
“Despite giving Harris the title of debate winner, independents felt there was one big unanswered question: What would Kamala Harris actually do in office? Half of independents told us they still felt they didn’t know enough about Harris’s plans after the debate — significantly more than said the same about Trump,” she said.
“That lack of detail may not be harmful in itself – there have been elected politicians with worse records than that – but if the Trump campaign can conflate it with a sense that he lacks belief, principle and strength, it could become a weakness.”
The early poll showed 49 percent of respondents believed Harris performed better that night, compared with 43 percent who said Trump won.
And when viewers were asked to describe in one word how they felt listening to it, the top response was “hopeful.”
For Trump, he was ‘upset’.
Few, however, said it had changed how they planned to vote, and Harris saw only a slight increase in her favorability.
And while 37 percent of respondents said they needed to know more about Trump’s plans in office, about 50 percent said the same about Harris.
JL Partners surveyed 800 independent viewers immediately after Tuesday’s debate. They said they knew more about Trump’s political plans than Harris did.
Trump and Harris faced off for more than 90 minutes in the ABC News debate on Tuesday
Their planes were parked side by side at LaGuardia Airport in New York as they attended a 9/11 commemoration at the Ground Zero memorial.
That leaves everything up for grabs over the final two months of the campaign in a race that is too close to call.
Trump will use his visit to Arizona to hone his pitch to Hispanic voters in a key battleground and to highlight how the state has been the epicenter of the country’s inflation.
“Arizonans know they would be worse off with another four years of leadership that frivolously spends our hard-earned money and continues to champion criminals over law-abiding citizens,” the campaign said.
“That’s exactly why Arizonans are confident that President Trump will make America affordable and safe again.”
Trump will also explain how prices have risen in the state since President Joe Biden and his vice president took office.
His campaign estimates that equates to $10,939 in additional transportation costs, $5,611 in energy and $3,968 in food.
On Friday, Trump will be at his own golf club outside Los Angeles, where he is scheduled to hold a news conference.
And later that day he flies to Las Vegas, Nevada, for a rally in another battleground state.
Murtaugh said the trip would highlight Trump’s intense interactions with the media, compared with Harris’ reluctance to answer questions.
“On the issues, on the areas that matter to people, she hurt herself last night because people tuned into the debate looking for answers from this mysterious candidate and they got nothing,” he said of the debate.
“People remember that, you know, like I was hiding something… hiding a lot of things.”