Kamala Harris’s Democratic national convention speech provoked a torrent of outrage from Donald Trump as the former US president fired off a volley of ripostes, rebuttals and angry calls to TV stations.
Trump posted 48 times on his Truth Social network during Harris’s 37-minute presidential acceptance speech, which was nearly an hour shorter than his own effort at the Republican convention last month.
Immediately afterwards, he called Fox News to deliver a rambling, live on-air tirade that was eventually cut off by the network’s hosts.
“Where’s Hunter,” Trump posted in all-capitals at the beginning of the speech in reference to Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, whose business affairs and legal troubles were a favourite target of Republicans before the president withdrew from the race last month.
As Harris paid tribute to those who nominated her, Trump wrote: “Too many thank yous too rapidly said. What’s going on with her?”
Later, as the vice-president went on the offensive against her opponent, Trump raised one of his favourite topics – himself. “Is she talking about me?” he wrote, again in block capitals.
Mostly, his focus was on Harris, repeatedly calling her a “Marxist” and writing: “Why doesn’t she do something about the things she complains about.”
“There will be no future under Comrade Kamala Harris, because she will take us into a Nuclear World War III,” he wrote. “She will never be respected by the Tyrants of the World!”
After Harris accused him of pressuring congressional Republicans to kill a bipartisan bill that would have cracked down on migrants at the southern border, Trump posted one of his longest screeds of the night.
“The Border Bill is one of the worst ever written, would have allowed millions of people into our Country, and it’s only a political ploy by her!,” he wrote. “It legalizes Illegal Immigration, and is a TOTAL DISASTER, WEAK AND INEFFECTIVE!”
At other times, his concerns seemed trite, such as when he targeted Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee who has been given the moniker “Coach Walz” over his high school football coaching activities. “Walz was an assistant coach, not a coach,” Trump wrote.
He also hit back angrily when Harris linked him to Project 2025, a far-right governing manifesto and blueprint for the next Republican presidency drawn up by some of Trump’s closest supporters and former officials, by claiming he had “absolutely nothing to do with” it, despite giving the keynote address to the annual conference of the group who created it.
Trump’s angry and often incoherent responses prompted the Washington Post commentator Dan Balz to observe that Harris’s rise to the top of the Democratic ticket in place of Joe Biden had left Trump “in a box” and unsure what to do after Harris outperformed him in the category about which he cares most – ratings.
“Harris has countered him, even bested him, at his own game,” Balz wrote. “Her crowds now match or exceed his. Her followers now are as enthusiastic as his … her convention’s ratings were better than his … He says he misses Biden, and it shows.”
Harris’s speech largely attracted positive reaction, even from some conservative corners. Scott Jennings, a former White House aide to George W Bush, told CNN her speech displayed presidential “plausibility”.
“She looks young, she looks coherent … so she’s the anti-Biden,” he said. “The Republican pushback … is that some of this is just substance-less patent, that there’s really no specificity in it, and that they ultimately think they are going to be able to fire her as the incumbent.
“The question we are going to be asking over the next couple of months is how far did she run away from Joe Biden to prevent the Republicans from portraying her as the incumbent? People are so upset with Biden-Harris on the economy, [that] if the Republicans tie her to it, all of the other stuff falls away.”
Even some of Trump’s supporters on the Maga right grudgingly conceded that Harris’s convention messaging represented a dire threat to his prospects.
In a video posted on X, the conservative commentator and former Fox News and Newsmax host Eric Bolling, said the Harris campaign was dominating the media landscape and blamed Trump for ceding the initiative while failing to come up with new ideas.
“We’re losing, losing the race,” he said in a tone of clear frustration. “The enthusiasm level on the left right now is overwhelming … They’re trying to redefine the Democrat party. They’re trying to say that the Democrats are the patriots, the party that’s worried about the country.
“They’re wearing camo hats with Kamala Harris’s name on it. Camouflage – that’s ours! She was flanked in her speech last night with two American flags. There were no Pride flags there. They’re redefining it, they’re going after our independent voters. What’s going on with Fox News, by the way? … It’s Democrat, Democrat, Democrat … The media are kicking our ass, on the right.”
But with Republicans such as the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham urging Trump to focus on policy rather than attack Harris personally,Trump’s reaction to her speech confirms the trouble he has in maintaining discipline on the campaign trail. During his call with Fox News he became irked by the presenter Martha MacCallum’s suggestion that Harris was having success in the polls, particularly with certain voting groups.
“She’s not having success; I’m having success,” he said. “I’m doing great with the Hispanic voters, doing great with Black men, I’m doing great with women.
“It’s only in your eyes that they have that, Martha. We are doing very well.”
Eventually he was cut off in mid-sentence by MacCallum’s co-host, Bret Baier, who told him: “We appreciate that live feedback.”