Kamala Harris needs to flip GOP's most vehement attack to hurt Trump at debate: columnist

Kamala Harris needs to flip the Republican’s most vehement attack at Tuesday’s debate — and use it to hammer Donald Trump, an MSNBC columnist wrote Monday.

Nicholas Sheppard wrote that border and immigration policy has been made a top issue in the 2024 election, with GOP talking heads pounding the Joe Biden administration — and Vice President Harris — with perceived failures.

But, wrote Sheppard, Tuesday’s ABC News event is a chance for Harris to turn that around

“Vice President Kamala Harris ought to approach this issue more shrewdly, playing to her party’s strengths and framing it in a way that paints former President Donald Trump’s views on immigrants as the deterioration of truly American ideals,” he wrote.

Among targets for Harris are Trump’s use of bigoted language, including in a speech in which he said, “Illegal immigration is poisoning the blood of our nation,” wrote Sheppard.

“With such openly bigoted language, Trump has brought nakedly authoritarian impulses into the heart of the country, poisoning the Enlightenment values that make America the beacon of democracy,” he went on.

“It was during the Trump administration that everyday people witnessed migrant children being locked up in abhorrent detention facilities.”

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Points like this, he wrote, should be used as ammunition for Democratic Party attacks.

“Harris and Democrats are often playing defense to Republican attacks on immigration and border security. But they can and should make the case to voters that supporting America’s legacy of welcoming immigrants is the patriotic thing to do,” he wrote.

“At the debate, Harris should take the opportunity to lay out the legislative pathway toward resolving the issue, then pivot to a more fundamental framing that speaks to more latent, abstract and instinctual feelings — and Americans’ higher and more enduring values. “