‘Kamala—She’s Worse Than Joe’

On Sunday afternoon—less than two hours after President Joe Biden announced he was bowing out of the race for reelection and also that he was endorsing Kamala Harris in his place—GOP vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance weighed in.

“Joe Biden has been the worst President in my lifetime and Kamala Harris has been right there with him every step of the way,” Vance tweeted. “Over the last four years she co-signed Biden’s open border and green scam policies that drove up the cost of housing and groceries. She owns all of these failures, and she lied for nearly four years about Biden’s mental capacity—saddling the nation with a president who can’t do the job.”

For at least a week now, Republicans have been mobilizing for a showdown with the vice president. 

That was obvious to anyone who spent last week in Milwaukee at the Republican National Convention, where four in ten speakers attacked Harris by name and Republicans road tested their anti-Harris talking points. (The Washington Post helpfully devoted an entire article to noting who at the convention mispronounced Harris’s first name.)

On Tuesday night, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley addressed the nearly 18,000 delegates, office holders, guests, and journalists packed into the Fiserv Forum. Her presence elicited a mixed reaction, with a small core of Haley supporters cheering her on and a smattering of boos. (Haley had the audacity to challenge Trump in the Republican primaries.) 

But when it came to attacking Democrats, there were no dissenting voices.

“For more than a year, I said that a vote for Joe Biden is a vote for President Kamala Harris,” Haley said, prompting convention-goers to boo loudly. “After seeing the debate, everyone knows it’s true. If we have four more years of Biden, or a single day of Harris, our country will be badly worse off. For the sake of our nation, we have to go with Donald Trump.”

Most of the Republican attacks on the VP went like this: Biden made Harris the “border czar,” and she’s done an awful job of securing the border. 

“I hold Joe Biden, Kamala Harris—the border czar, what a joke—and Gavin Newsom and every Democrat who supports open borders responsible for the death of my son,” Anne Funder, whose 15-year-old son died of an accidental fentanyl overdose, declared at the convention Tuesday.

Her message was echoed by a slickly produced, Batman-style video that aired repeatedly over the course of the four-day convention, slamming the “Biden-Harris Administration” for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans killed by fentanyl.

“Joe Biden’s border czar Kamala Harris and a Democrat Senate have put the welfare of illegals ahead of our own citizens,” Ohio Senate candidate Bernie Moreno said in a speech Tuesday evening.

The next night, Texas governor Greg Abbott took to the stage.

“When Joe Biden and Kamala Harris refused to even come to Texas and to see the border crisis they created, I took the border to them,” Abbott said. “I began busing illegal immigrants to Washington, D.C.”

Later that evening, Peter Navarro, a former Trump administration official who spent four months in federal prison for not complying with the January 6, 2021, House investigation, told the crowd: “Joe and Kamala—they threw out the woke blue carpet across the Rio Grande.”

Also Wednesday, the Trump campaign announced that it would not agree to a vice presidential debate at least until the Democrats held their convention in mid-August—and selected their nominee.

“We don’t know who the Democrat nominee for vice president is going to be, so we can’t lock in a date before their convention,” Brian Hughes, the Trump campaign’s senior adviser, said. “To do so would be unfair to Gavin Newsom, J.B. Pritzker, Gretchen Whitmer, or whoever Kamala Harris picks as her running mate”—a nod to some of the other Democrats who have been talked up as potential presidential nominees.

Of course, Republicans aren’t going to limit themselves to the border when it comes to bashing Harris. They plan on attaching her name to every failure, real or perceived, of the Biden administration—starting with inflation.

Alabama senator Katie Britt blamed “Biden-Harris” for high grocery prices, high gas prices, high mortgage rates, and “skyrocketing” rent (part of the GOP’s stepped-up play for young voters who can’t afford a down payment).

Mike Pompeo, who served as Trump’s secretary of state, asked: “Forty-two months on, what have Joe Biden and Kamala Harris done?”

Then, he answered his own question: “Thirteen new Gold Star families from Afghanistan”—a reference to the 13 service members who died during the withdrawal.

Delegates got the message.

“Is it going to be Joe?” an Arizona delegate with a fake bandage over her ear, meant to signal solidarity with Donald Trump, who was still wearing a bandage following his near assassination, told me. “I don’t think so. I think she’s the runner-up. I think they’re getting ready to make her the nominee.”

“It’s like Nikki said,” another delegate, sitting next to her, chimed in. “We gotta be ready for whoever these crooks throw our way.”

Edward X. Thomas, an honorary delegate from New Jersey, told me he didn’t like Harris because of her environmental record. He thought climate change was “a hoax.” 

“Yeah, Kamala—she’s worse than Joe,” Thomas said.

Peter Savodnik is a writer for The Free Press. Follow him on X @petersavodnik, and read his piece “I Fear the GOP Is Heading Down the Rabbit Hole.”

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