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Trump campaign projects confidence and looks to young male voters for an edge on Harris

News

Trump campaign projects confidence and looks to young male voters for an edge on Harris
News

News

Trump campaign projects confidence and looks to young male voters for an edge on Harris

2024-08-10 19:36 Last Updated At:19:40

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — As Donald Trump adjusts to the reality of his new race against Kamala Harris, his campaign is counting on younger male voters to give him the edge in November in a presidential contest they insist is his to lose.

Trump and his Republican campaign now face a dramatically different race than the one just three weeks ago, before President Joe Biden abandoned his bid. While they acknowledge polls have tightened with Harris as the Democratic nominee, they maintain that the fundamentals of the race have not changed, with voters deeply sour over the direction of the country, and particularly the economy.

“What has happened is we are witnessing a kind of out-of-body experience where we have suspended reality for a couple of weeks,” Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio told reporters during a briefing in West Palm Beach on Thursday of the current state of the race.

It was a message echoed by Trump during a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago club.

“The honeymoon period’s gonna end,” he insisted while minimizing the size of the crowds Harris has been drawing and lashing out at his new opponent. “Let me tell you: We have the enthusiasm."

Campaign officials acknowledge that Harris had energized the Democratic base and that her team has taken the lead on fundraising. But they insist they have more than enough to do what they need to win. Trump's campaign and its affiliates reported raising $138.7 million in July — far less than the eye-popping $310 million sum reported by Harris. Her campaign began August with more cash on hand.

With less than three months to go, senior campaign officials are focused on a group of persuadable voters that they believe is key to victory. The targets, which they say comprise about 11% of the electorate in key battleground states, skew younger and are disproportionately male and moderate. While more than half are white, they include more nonwhites, especially Asians and Hispanics, than the broader electorate.

They are especially frustrated by the economy, including their personal finances, and are pessimistic things will improve.

“It’s a very narrow band of people that we are trying to move,” Fabrizio said of the efforts. Since these voters don't engage with traditional news outlets and have traded cable for streaming services, the campaign has been working to reach them in novel ways.

"There is a reason why we’re doing podcasts. There is a reason why we’re doing Adin Ross," Fabrizio said, referring to the controversial internet personality who ended his interview with the former president earlier this week by giving him a Tesla Cybertruck wrapped in images of Trump raising his fist after his assassination attempt.

“There is a reason why we are doing all of those things. You know what these people pay attention to? MMA, Adin Ross," he said. “MMA” refers to mixed martial arts.

Trump campaign officials acknowledge the Democratic base is now motivated in a way it wasn’t when Biden was the nominee. Harris, they say, will likely do better than Biden would have with Black voters, especially women and older men.

But they argue Harris is doing little to appeal to swing voters. And they intend to spend the next 80-plus days painting her as a radical liberal and as the incumbent rather than a change, tying her to the most unpopular Biden administration policies.

“There’s way more information about her that they don’t know that they’re going to hear. And we’re going to make sure they’re going to get," Fabrizio said.

By the end of the race, they believe, neither candidate will be liked, but voters will choose the candidate they feel will most improve their economic conditions.

They pointed to a line Harris has been using to refer to Trump's presidency — “We are not going back” — as particularly ill conceived, given that some voters say things were better when Trump was in office than they are now.

Trump campaign aides said they now have staff on the ground in 18 states, ranging from critical battlegrounds to states like Virginia, where Democrats have been favored, that they hope they can put into play.

The campaign says it now has hundreds of paid staff and more than 300 Trump and GOP offices open across battleground states. The Harris campaign, meanwhile, says it has 1,500 paid staffers and 265 offices across the country.

But much of the Trump effort relies on volunteers and outside groups.

They are trying to replicate a model they used successfully during the GOP primary in Iowa this winter, where volunteer “caucus captains” were given a list of 10 neighbors they pledged to get out to the polls. The campaign has credited that model with boosting turnout on a brutally cold and icy caucus night.

The “Trump Force 47” program is focused on targeting low- and medium-propensity voters. Volunteers will be canvassing, writing postcards, phone banking and organizing their neighbors.

So far, 12,000 captains have been trained and given voter target lists, according to officials. An additional 30,000 have volunteered, with more than 2,000 expected to be trained per week between now and Election Day.

A large part of the campaign's outreach will also rely on outside groups, which will be running paid canvassing and get-out-the-vote efforts thanks to new guidance from the Federal Election Commission that allow campaigns to coordinate with outside groups in ways that were previously not allowed.

The campaign said more than 1,000 paid canvassers are on the ground in battleground states, and they're also working to register about 1.6 million targeted voters in those competitive places.

The Harris campaign, meanwhile, says it is amassing its own army of volunteers. In the first two weeks of her candidacy, they said, 200,000 volunteers joined the campaign and signed up for 29,000 canvass shifts and 197,000 phone banking shifts.

“The reality is, Donald Trump and his orbit were late to build a program, and they’re now scrambling to play catch-up," said Harris-Walz battleground director Dan Kanninen in a statement. In an election that is expected to be extremely close, he said, "building an effective and disciplined field operation, and being able to be in communities and build trust and relationships for months as we have, is absolutely essential. The Trump campaign simply isn’t doing it.”

Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, speaks at a campaign event at Wollard International, Aug. 7, 2024, in Eau Claire, Wis. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, speaks at a campaign event at Wollard International, Aug. 7, 2024, in Eau Claire, Wis. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

People wait in line before a campaign rally for Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump, in Bozeman, Mont., Friday, Aug. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

People wait in line before a campaign rally for Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump, in Bozeman, Mont., Friday, Aug. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump talks about the size of the room as he speaks to reporters during a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate Thursday, Aug. 8, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump talks about the size of the room as he speaks to reporters during a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate Thursday, Aug. 8, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday directing the United States to again withdraw from the landmark Paris climate agreement, dealing a blow to worldwide efforts to combat global warming and once again distancing the U.S. from its closest allies.

Trump's action, hours after he was sworn in to a second term, echoed his directive in 2017, when he announced that the U.S. would abandon the global Paris accord. The pact is aimed at limiting long-term global warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels or, failing that, keeping temperatures at least well below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels.

Trump also signed a letter to the United Nations indicating his intention to withdraw from the 2015 agreement, which allows nations to provide targets to cut their own emissions of greenhouse gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. Those targets are supposed to become more stringent over time, with countries facing a February 2025 deadline for new individual plans. The outgoing Biden administration last month offered a plan to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by more than 60% by 2035.

Trump's order says the Paris accord is among a number of international agreements that don't reflect U.S. values and “steer American taxpayer dollars to countries that do not require, or merit, financial assistance in the interests of the American people."

Instead of joining a global agreement, “the United States’ successful track record of advancing both economic and environmental objectives should be a model for other countries,'' Trump said.

Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and a key architect of the Paris accord, called the planned U.S. withdrawal unfortunate but said action to slow climate change “is stronger than any single country’s politics and policies."

The global context for Trump's action is “very different to 2017,'' Tubiana said Monday, adding that “there is unstoppable economic momentum behind the global transition, which the U.S has gained from and led but now risks forfeiting."

The International Energy Agency expects the global market for key clean energy technologies to triple to more than $2 trillion by 2035, she said.

“The impacts of the climate crisis are also worsening. The terrible wildfires in Los Angeles are the latest reminder that Americans, like everyone else, are affected by worsening climate change,” Tubiana said.

Gina McCarthy, who served as White House climate adviser under President Joe Biden, a Democrat, said that if Trump, a Republican, “truly wants America to lead the global economy, become energy independent and create good-paying American jobs," then he must “stay focused on growing our clean energy industry. Clean technologies are driving down energy costs for people all across our country."

The world is now long-term 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.3 degrees Celsius) above mid-1800s temperatures. Most but not all climate monitoring agencies said global temperatures last year passed the warming mark of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, and all said it was the warmest year on record.

The withdrawal process from the Paris accord takes one year. Trump’s previous withdrawal took effect the day after the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Biden.

While the first Trump-led withdrawal from the landmark U.N. agreement — adopted by 196 nations — shocked and angered nations across the globe, “not a single country followed the U.S. out the door,” said Alden Meyer, a longtime climate negotiations analyst with the European think tank E3G.

Instead, other nations renewed their commitment to slowing climate change, along with investors, businesses, governors, mayors and others in the U.S., Meyer and other experts said.

Still, they lamented the loss of U.S. leadership in global efforts to slow climate change, even as the world is on track to set yet another record hot year and has been lurching from drought to hurricane to flood to wildfire.

“Clearly America is not going to play the commanding role in helping solve the climate crisis, the greatest dilemma humans have ever encountered,″ said climate activist and writer Bill McKibben. “For the next few years the best we can hope is that Washington won’t manage to wreck the efforts of others.”

About half of Americans “somewhat” or “strongly” oppose U.S. action to withdraw from the climate accord, and even Republicans aren’t overwhelmingly in favor, according according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Only about 2 in 10 U.S. adults “somewhat” or “strongly” in favor of withdrawing from the Paris agreement, while about one-quarter are neutral.

Much of the opposition to U.S. withdrawal comes from Democrats, but Republicans display some ambivalence as well. Slightly less than half of Republicans are in favor of withdrawing from the climate accord, while about 2 in 10 are opposed.

China several years ago passed the United States as the world's largest annual carbon dioxide emitting nation. The U.S. — the second biggest annual carbon polluting country — put 4.9 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in the air in 2023, down 11% from a decade earlier, according to the scientists who track emissions for the Global Carbon Project.

But carbon dioxide lasts in the atmosphere for centuries, so the United States has put more of the heat-trapping gas that is now in the air than any other nation. The U.S. is responsible for nearly 22% of the carbon dioxide put in the atmosphere since 1950, according to Global Carbon Project.

While global efforts to fight climate change continued during Trump's first term, many experts worry that a second Trump term will be more damaging, with the United States withdrawing even further from climate efforts in a way that could cripple future presidents’ efforts. With Trump, who has dismissed climate change, in charge of the world’s leading economy, those experts fear other countries, especially China, could use it as an excuse to ease off their own efforts to curb carbon emissions.

Simon Stiell, the U.N. climate change executive secretary, held out hope that the U.S. would continue to embrace the global clean energy boom.

“Ignoring it only sends all that vast wealth to competitor economies, while climate disasters like droughts, wildfires and superstorms keep getting worse," Stiell said. “The door remains open to the Paris Agreement, and we welcome constructive engagement from any and all countries.”

Associated Press writer Linley Sanders contributed to this report.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find the AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

AES Indiana Petersburg Generating Station, a coal-fired power plant, operates in Petersburg, Ind., on Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

AES Indiana Petersburg Generating Station, a coal-fired power plant, operates in Petersburg, Ind., on Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

FILE - Wind turbines stretch across the horizon at dusk at the Spearville Wind Farm, Sept. 29, 2024, near Spearville, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

FILE - Wind turbines stretch across the horizon at dusk at the Spearville Wind Farm, Sept. 29, 2024, near Spearville, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

President Donald Trump gestures during the 60th Presidential Inauguration in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, Pool)

President Donald Trump gestures during the 60th Presidential Inauguration in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, Pool)

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