In an interesting chat with Politico’s Jonathan Martin, two of Trump’s top campaign strategists, Chris LaCivita and Tony Fabrizio, shared how Kamala Harris ended up being one of Trump’s biggest advantages in the election. Surprisingly, it wasn’t through any big scandals but simply by using her own words.
When Martin asked which campaign ad worked best against Harris, Fabrizio didn’t hold back. “Honestly, any ad where she was talking worked well. Just using her words,” he said. “We had so much material from her speeches and interviews that we couldn’t even use all of it.”.. Continue reading here ▶
One ad they ran repeatedly showed a clip from The View, where Harris said she had no major disagreements with President Joe Biden. That statement, according to the campaign team, really struck a chord with voters.
But the strategy wasn’t just about playing her words on repeat. The campaign also ran ads targeting different voter groups. For instance, some ads focused on cultural issues like transgender debates, which spoke to a certain audience. Others were tailored to more general concerns.
“It’s two different approaches,” LaCivita explained. “For voters who rarely show up to vote, the goal was just to get them to the polls. For persuadable voters, it was about convincing them to switch sides.”
Harris’s team thought persuadable voters made up around 4–6% of the electorate, but Trump’s strategists believed the number was closer to 10–12%. With that in mind, they designed their entire campaign to target these undecided voters. “We tracked what issues mattered to them and built our messaging around that,” LaCivita said.
In the end, Harris’s public statements became one of the Trump team’s most effective tools. Whether or not this strategy was fair, it’s clear it played a big role in how the campaign turned things in Trump’s favor.
