(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump woke up Monday to a whole new campaign after an extraordinary few months during which it seemed he couldn’t stop winning. The Republican nominee had raised more money than President Joe Biden, who famously fumbled their debate. A federal judge who owes Trump her job threw out a major criminal case against him. The Supreme Court he helped shape granted him extraordinary immunity. And he survived an assassination attempt.
But then the 81-year-old Biden dropped out after almost a month of frenzied media scrutiny over his age and calls within his own party to step back. The Democrat handed his campaign to 59-year-old Vice President Kamala Harris, instantly turning the race for the White House on its head. In the Bloomberg Originals mini-documentary Can Trump Win Without Biden?, we explain not only how Trump’s campaign apparatus is more experienced this time, but the new, potentially potent threat Harris poses to his plans.
A former US Senator from California, Harris immediately began to shape her campaign message by highlighting earlier roles as San Francisco’s district attorney and California attorney general. Facing an opponent who has been impeached twice, indicted four times and convicted of 34 felonies, Harris has made plain that Trump’s checkered past will be a focus of her campaign. Meanwhile, the klieg light on Biden’s age may now switch to Trump, who at 78 is just three years younger than Biden but almost two decades older than Harris. Trump also has his own long history of meandering speeches and malapropisms.
But the Republican retains a formidable campaign, supported by billionaires and grassroots donations alike. And the GOP has been completely remade in Trump’s own image: his daughter-in-law runs the Republican National Committee and so-called Never Trump Republicans have been escorted out of the party’s once-vaunted Big Tent. His staff is more professional, comprised of longtime Republican strategists and kingmakers instead of former golf caddies and professional wrestling executives. His policy priorities are clearer, partly through the far-right Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 manifesto, which aims to gut federal agencies and install Trump loyalists.
The arrival of Harris injects not only Democratic energy and enthusiasm in the race, but provides Trump’s professional team a brand new set of avenues upon which to attack. In Can Trump Win Without Biden?, Bloomberg Originals games out the rest of this suddenly-new 2024 campaign.
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