Former President Donald Trump wants to make Vice President Kamala Harris answer for her record in public office during Tuesday night’s debate, beginning with her tenure as San Francisco district attorney and continuing through her rise to a heartbeat from the presidency, the Republican campaign told The Post Monday.
“Kamala Harris will be made to defend her crazy liberal record,” said Trump 2024 senior adviser Tim Murtaugh, offering a preview of the 45th president’s tactics at Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center
“She will not be able to escape from it. By the end of this debate, everyone will know her record.”
Trump, 78, has previously said he has not prepped for the ABC News forum in the traditional sense and indicated he will decide his ultimate strategy at the last minute.
On Monday, Murtaugh also predicted that Harris will try to distance herself from having been the unpopular Biden’s vice president for three and a half years, but will not be “permitted” to do so by Trump.
“That point will be made clear,” Murtaugh said.
The job facing Harris became apparent following the publication of a New York Times/Siena College poll Sunday, which found 61% of likely voters want the next president to be a “major change” from the 81-year-old Biden — and 55% say Harris represented “more of the same.”
In the veep’s only major pre-debate interview, held Aug. 29 with CNN’s Dana Bash, Harris tried to explain away her apparent tack to the center on several policies by insisting that “my values have not changed.”
“That means that everything she did in her prior career leading up to this point is brought into the present day,” Murtaugh said Monday. “That means she is the San Francisco liberal she always was. She’s just pretending not to be that.”
Another Trump campaign official told The Post that Trump will go hard at Harris’ record during her seven years as the top prosecutor in the City by the Bay.
“Kamala Harris is going to have to remember the names of the people whose lives were lost in San Francisco due to her weak-on-crime policies,” this person said. “She’s going to have to be prepared to answer for why criminals like Edwin Ramos were free to kill. She’ll have to explain to the nation why she wanted to give drug dealers a get-out-of-jail-free card.
“President Trump is not going to let her get away with the lie that she is some law-and-order prosecutor.”
Edwin Ramos was an illegal immigrant from El Salvador who killed dad Tony Bologna and his two sons, Michael and Matthew, in 2008.
Ramos had a juvenile criminal record prior to the murders, having been involved in a gang-related assault of a bus passenger and the attempted robbery of a pregnant woman.
In both cases, local juvenile probation officers did not involve federal immigration authorities because it was not San Francisco policy to question a youngster’s legal status at the time.
“These crimes, these criminals, these specific cases, she’s going to have to answer for,” Murtaugh said.
Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller said the Republican nominee will call out both Harris’ record as VP and her avoidance of the media.
“The high-bar expectations facing Kamala Harris is that for every new idea put forward, Harris has to explain both the damage she’s done to our economy as the sitting vice president, as well as answer why she hasn’t implemented any of these new plans during the last 3 1/2 years,” Miller said in a statement.
“Further complicating matters is that Harris’ new Obama campaign advisors have told her to hide from the press for two months, further raising expectations for the voters. The one thing we do know, however, is that Kamala Harris’ values have not changed, and we will be educating the American public as to what that means policy-wise, in great detail.”
Trump’s allies also want him to take the same approach as in the June 27 CNN debate against President Biden.
“If it’s the same [tone] as we saw with Biden it will be a success. We believe if President Trump contrasts his record against Kamala Harris’ failed record, that it’s going to be a success,” Miller told The Post during a press call on Monday.
“President Trump is going to be himself. I think that’s an important thing to keep in mind here. Right now you have Kamala Harris in debate boot camp, being drilled by new advisers who worked for President Obama who she doesn’t know. She has binders full of details trying to figure out what’s been happening,” Miller added.
Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who has been aiding Trump with his debate prep, added that the former president “respects women” and will not take a softer attitude with Harris due to her sex.
He doesn’t “feel the need” to speak to women in “any other way than he would speak to a man,” Gabbard said of the Republican nominee.
For her part, Harris has said she will depict Trump as more concerned with his own ambition than the American people.
“We should be prepared for the fact that he is not burdened by telling the truth,” Harris told the “Rickey Smiley Morning Show” in an interview broadcast Friday.
“He tends to fight for himself, not for the American people, and I think that’s going to come out during the course of the debate.”
The Democratic campaign was handed a loss last week when ABC News refused their request to change the rules and leave both candidate mics unmuted.
The Harris campaign did not respond to an inquiry from The Post.
