Kamala Harris’ latest appeal to Republicans: Trump is weak on foreign policy

Kamala Harris’ latest appeal to Republicans: Trump is weak on foreign policy Show Caption Hide Caption Zelenskyy plans to share Ukraine’s war-ending plans with Biden Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy plans to share his plans to end the war with President Biden, as well as Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. WASHINGTON – Vice President Kamala Harris is taking a page out of Nikki Haley’s playbook and hitting former President Donald Trump as weak on foreign policy in her latest attempt to win over disaffected Republicans and GOP-leaning independents. Harris’ campaign released an ad that showcased former members of Trump’s national security team criticizing the ex-president, characterizing him a “danger to our troops and our democracy” and casting him as unfit for office. During the presidential debate, Harris told Trump that America’s allies in Europe and NATO are thankful he’s out of office. She brought up Russia’s assault on Ukraine and said that if Trump were in charge, Russian President Vladimir Putin “would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe, starting with Poland.” Then she made a direct appeal to the more than 700,000 Polish Americans living in battleground Pennsylvania. The foreign policy-focused outreach is part of a concerted effort by the Harris campaign to win over voters who cast a ballot for Haley, a former United Nations ambassador who made foreign policy the centerpiece of her campaign, in the Republican presidential primary earlier this year. Meanwhile, Trump’s main foreign policy criticism of Harris has been that overseas wars would not be happening if he were president because he’s seen as strong by other leaders. Trump has characterized the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan as a “humiliation” that “set off the collapse of American credibility and respect all around the world.” “I will end every single international crisis that the current administration has created, including the horrible war with Russia and Ukraine, which would have never happened if I was president,” he said during his speech at Republican National Convention in July. “And the war caused by the attack on Israel, which would never have happened if I was president.” Harris has said relatively little on the campaign trail about her foreign policy agenda outside of her speech at the Democratic National Convention and her comments at the presidential debate. Her campaign website provides more details and includes the pledge that Harris would “strengthen, not abdicate, our global leadership” and stand up for American interests from China and Iranian-backed groups that the U.S. has deemed to be terrorists. Now, her campaign and former U.S. officials, including Republicans who served in the last administration and Congress, are turning to foreign policy to make their case for her and against Trump. “For a lot of Republican voters like myself, it is alarming to hear someone like Donald Trump repeatedly laud Viktor Orban of Hungary,” Olivia Troye, a former Trump administration official, told USA TODAY. Rick Wilson, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a group of moderate conservatives and former Republicans, says Harris has been effective at putting Trump in a box on national security and foreign policy, highlighting his embrace of authoritarian leaders and portraying him as the weaker of the two candidates. “She’s running as a sort of national security centrist that would be familiar from the 80s and 90s to a lot of Republicans,” Wilson told USA TODAY. Every modern American president has committed the U.S. to being a world leader and building its alliances, except one, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told USA TODAY. He said it demonstrates “how isolated Donald Trump is from that great tradition of Republican presidents.” “I think that’s why we’ve gotten so much support from Republicans, because they see the vice president supporting our alliances and supporting democracy around the world,” Harris’ national Republican engagement director Austin Weatherford said. Republicans against Trump – and Harris Ex-Trump national security advisor John Bolton – now a detractor of the former president – says he’s not voting for Harris. “My sincere belief is I don’t think either one of them are competent to be president,” Bolton said. Munir Lalani, a registered Republican from Texas and former Haley supporter said he was “undecided” on whether he would even vote. He added: “The U.S. can’t be left holding the bag for everyone,” he said. While some of Bolton’s former colleagues in the Bush administration, where he served as U.N. ambassador, have said publicly that they’re going to back Harris, he told USA TODAY, “There are a lot more former colleagues that have decided they’re going to vote for Trump.” “They’re not writing letters about it,” he added. At an August event hosted by conservative radio host Erick Erickson, he cited the “growing abandonment of our allies on the world stage” as a reason for not backing his former running mate. He went on to say of President Joe Biden and Harris, “The leaders of other countries think that they’re weak and incompetent.” Republican Congressman Mike Lawler of New York, a Trump supporter who serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said trying to cast Trump as weak on foreign policy is “projection” on Harris’ part. “Under Biden and Kamala Harris, the world is a tinderbox and we’re in the most precarious place we are in since World War II because of their failed policies of appeasement.” Lawler also brought up the “disastrous” U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which led to the killing of 13 American service members in the final days of the war. During the Trump-Harris debate, she dodged the question of whether she was responsible for the withdrawal, instead saying she agreed with President Biden’s decision to pull out. “Four presidents said they would, and Joe Biden did,” she said. On Israel’s war with Hamas, Lawler characterized the administration as “extremely weak and erratic.” Lawler cast her support of Biden’s decision in May to withhold a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs from Israel over concerns over them being used in densely populated areas of Gaza, as an example of an “arms embargo” to Israel. “I mean Kamala Harris has been out there trying to both sides the situation in Gaza,” said Lawler. Harris has repeatedly said that she does not support an arms embargo on Israel, including in a DNC speech in which she said she both sympathizes with Palestinian people and supports Israel’s right to defend itself against the Hamas militants who killed more than 1,200 Israelis and took approximately 250 hostages. According to the Hamas-run Gazan Health Ministry, more than 40,000 Palestinians have died in the ensuing war.. For Republicans who espouse traditional U.S. foreign policy views, Harris’ vision of America’s role in the world is more representative of former Republican President Ronald Reagan’s views than the America First agenda they’re hearing from Trump. “Whenever you listen to Trump’s speech and you listen to Harris’ speech on foreign policy and on security matters, if you’re a Reagan Republican, you’d say she’s closer than Trump is,” said former Arkansas Gov. Hutchinson attended the DNC and said Harris has “made good strides” on national security and the administration has been consistent on its approach to Ukraine and Israel. “We think there’s a huge number of Republicans that will come out and be supportive of the vice president,” Weatherford said. – This Summarize was created by Neural News AI (V1). Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/09/21/harris-foreign-policy-trump-appeal-republicans/75256114007/