From ‘joyful’ to ‘fascist’ – Why Kamala Harris adopted Biden’s playbook on blasting Trump

Vice President Kamala Harris stood outside the vice president’s residence in Washington, D.C., launching a blistering attack on former President Trump, her rival in the 2024 White House race.

Harris charged that the former president was “increasingly unhinged and unstable” as she pointed to critical comments made by retired Gen. John Kelly, Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff, in a New York Times interview.

The vice president argued Trump was a “fascist” as she noted Kelly’s allegations that the then-president repeatedly voiced admiration for Nazi Germany dictator Adolf Hitler.

Hours later, at a CNN town hall in battleground Pennsylvania on Wednesday night, Harris doubled down on her charges.

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From the Vice President’s residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory on Oct. 23, 2024, Kamala Harris spoke on former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly’s recent comments on former President Donald Trump, including that he fits “into the general definition of fascist” and wanted the “kind of generals Hitler had.” (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Asked if she believed the Republican presidential nominee was a fascist, the vice president answered “yes, I do.”

And she emphasized that American voters “care about our democracy and not having a President of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist.”

Trump, who has vehemently denied Kelly’s allegations, took to social media to fire back at Harris, arguing that her criticisms were a sign that she’s losing the election.

The former president claimed that Harris was “increasingly raising her rhetoric, going so far as to call me Adolf Hitler, and anything else that comes to her warped mind.”

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If Harris’ criticisms that Trump is “unfit to serve” in the Oval Office sound familiar, there’s a good reason – they are.

As he ran for re-election, President Biden made his argument that Trump was an existential threat to democracy a centerpiece of his presidential campaign.

Biden spotlighted what he called the former president’s “assault on democracy” – as he pointed to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters aiming to upend congressional certification of Biden’s 2020 election victory – during a January speech as he kicked off the election year.

President Biden, right, and first lady Jill Biden walk off-stage after speaking at a campaign rally, on Friday, June 28, 2024, in Raleigh, North Carolina. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

As he continued to run for another four years in the White House, the president repeatedly argued that Trump was “a threat to democracy.”

But after a besieged Biden in July dropped his re-election bid and backed Harris to replace him atop the Democrats’ 2024 ticket, the vice president and her advisers seemed to discard the Biden playbook on Trump.

Instead, “joyful warrior” Harris spotlighted a more upbeat message and when she focused on Trump, she noted his petty grievances and called him an “unserious man,” as she argued during her Democratic National Convention address in late August.

But as the calendar moved from summer to autumn, and Election Day neared, in a margin-of-error race where plenty of polls suggest the momentum belongs to Trump, there’s been an apparent shift of tone coming from the vice president and her campaign.

“Donald Trump is increasingly unstable and unhinged and will stop at nothing to claim unchecked power for himself,” Harris charged last week during multiple campaign rallies in battleground Wisconsin.

According to a senior campaign official, Harris will deliver what’s being described as a major “closing argument” address next Tuesday – one week until Election Day – on the Ellipse, which is just south of the White House and north of the National Mall.

In this Jan. 6, 2021 photo with the White House in the background, President Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Washington, ahead of the attack on the U.S. Capitol. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

The campaign spotlighted that Trump headlined a large rally of supporters at the Ellipse on Jan 6, 2021. Many of those who attended Trump’s rally then marched to the U.S. Capital and joined other protesters in storming the building. The campaign sees the Ellipse as a symbolic location that they believe will help make clear to voters the choice in the presidential election.

The contrast with the former president that Harris is working to sketch comes as she and her campaign make a full court press to attract dissatisfied Republicans who supported Trump rival Nikki Haley earlier this year in the GOP presidential primaries. 

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While Trump continues to hold massive sway over the Republican Party, even a sliver of GOP voters casting ballots for Harris could make a difference in some of the battleground states in a race likely to be decided in the margins.

Harris in recent weeks has teamed up in the key battleground states with high-profile anti-Trump Republicans, including former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming.

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris listens as former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney speaks during a town hall at The People’s Light in Malvern, Pa., Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

A Democratic strategist in Biden’s political orbit told Fox News that the shift in Harris’ messaging is a sign that the president was right to repeatedly take aim at Trump on the campaign trail as an existential threat to democracy.

The Trump campaign argues that the new messaging will backfire with voters.

“Kamala Harris is focused on Donald Trump and President Donald J. Trump is focused on the American people,” Trump campaign senior adviser Danielle Alvarez argued on “Fox and Friends” on Thursday. “Our closing argument is so different than theirs. They are throwing everything they can at the wall to see what sticks because Kamala Harris is floundering.”

Longtime vocal GOP Trump-critic Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire – who was a top Haley supporter and surrogate in the Republican nomination battle but says he’ll vote for Trump – said that the attacks wouldn’t succeed in courting voters.

“You’re dealing with an individual who makes outrageous statements all the time,” Sununu said of Trump during an interview on Fox News’ “Your World with Neil Cavuto.” “They’re baked into the noise.”

Sununu argued that “the reason the Harris campaign has completely frozen, lost all their momentum, is because all they do is talk about crazy things that Trump says and does.”

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Longtime Republican strategist Colin Reed, a veteran of multiple presidential campaigns, agreed.

“Voters have been hearing versions of this overheated rhetoric for the better part of the last decade, and they’re starting to tune it out as background noise,” he told Fox News Digital.

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Reed also noted that the new criticism comes after Trump survived two assassination attempts against his life this summer, and many of the former president’s allies blame rhetoric from some Democrats for fueling the toxic political climate.

“It’s especially ironic coming from the Biden-Harris Administration that ran on an idea of unity, and are now demonizing someone who has been subject to multiple attempts on his life,” noted Reed, who supported vocal Trump critic former Gov. Chris Christie this cycle.

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump arrives at a campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show, Saturday, Oct. 5, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania, two and a half months after he survived an assassination attempt against his life at the same venue.  (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinso)

But Reed said “the bigger challenge is that life was easier under the previous presidency than the current one. Prices were lower, the border more secure and ‘inflation’ was an esoteric term from an economics class and not a headache of everyday life. The Harris campaign has failed to lay out their vision and positive plans to address these issues, leaving them with no choice but to focus solely on the negatives around Trump and hope for the best.”

He called it “a risky bet when voters are looking for concrete solutions to real problems.”

Even some Democrats have issues with the new messaging.

“I worry that the threat to democracy message rings hollow with the majority of voters who are much more focused on improving their own personal situation and want to vote for someone who will make their life more affordable,” seasoned Democratic strategist and communicator Chris Moyer told Fox News Digital.

Moyer said that “if I were the Harris campaign, I would continue to hammer home through Election Day the message of what Harris will do for these voters to lower costs and help them get ahead. In doing so, she will be speaking to the top priority across multiple subsets of the electorate. Voters who have the luxury of worrying about the broad concern of the fate of democracy are most likely already voting for Harris.”

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.