Former Obama advisor Tommy Vietor expressed concerns Tuesday on his podcast about Vice President Kamala Harris’ closing message on former President Donald Trump, suggesting her labeling him a fascist might alienate undecided swing voters.
Over the past week, corporate media and the Harris campaign have amplified comparisons of Trump to Hitler, following comments from Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, John Kelly, who told The New York Times and The Atlantic that Trump “met the definition of a fascist” and reportedly admired figures like Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. On “Pod Save America,” Vietor voiced his concern over this messaging, saying the tone has become “mixed,” sounding “partisan and hyperbolic.”
“I’m a little worried about the balance of the moment and not because of the message testing of ads. It’s just because you have to ask yourself what is breaking through in the closing days, and I do think it is primarily this conversation about Trump and fascism,” Vietor said. “I think it’s valuable to say the top people that worked for him don’t trust him to be president again — I think that’s alarming new information, probably for a lot of people. But it’s gotten mixed in with conversations about praising Hitler’s generals and things that I think just sound partisan and hyperbolic, and a lot of people brush it off.”
One of Vietor’s co-hosts then stepped in to defend the Harris campaign’s rhetoric, noting that CNN’s Anderson Cooper had raised the topic of Trump being called a fascist. Vietor clarified that while he wasn’t placing blame on anyone for focusing on the subject, he emphasized that swing voters might be more concerned about the economy than this issue.
“I’m not blaming anyone, I’m talking about the closing conversation that people are hearing, and I think it’s overly tilted away from an economic message right now in ways that worry me. Because every focus group and piece of polling we see shows you that voters primarily care about those issues, and they’re also, there’s a pretty easy, ready-made answer for Trump, which is we saw him for four years, people don’t think it was that bad, and so some of the language used to describe him can seem ridiculous to people. So that’s where my anxiety comes from,” Vietor continued.
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“I agree with you, like, I’m not criticizing their strategy necessarily, but you get to decide whether you do a press avail or not, you get to take questions or not, you get to decide how you answer things and what you highlight or not. So it does feel like they are leaning into this,” Vietor added. “There’s a big speech Tuesday at the ellipse where Jan. 6, you know, started, right? That is going to lead to a conversation about the 2020 election and the insurrection and Trump’s fascistic tendencies, and I just, I’m a little worried about that emphasis when a lot of these undecided swing voters are like, ‘I don’t know, but gas was cheaper.’”
Voters have consistently cited the economy, inflation, and immigration as major concerns when deciding who to support in the 2024 election. Trump is trusted by voters over Harris on the economy by 12 points, up from an 8-point lead in August, according to a recent Wall Street Journal poll. The former president also leads Harris on immigration by 15 points, a significant increase from his 7-point lead in August.
Featured Image Credit: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America
