Steve Cortes, former senior spokesman and strategist for the 2016 and 2020 Trump campaigns and current head of the League of American Workers, said Vice President Kamala Harris has a serious “authenticity” problem among voters in the lead-up to the November 5 general election.
Cortes said in Pennsylvania, for example, voters believe Harris is not genuine about her sudden support for fracking or her alleged support for tougher border security.
In this regard, as Pennsylvania is a critical battleground state in this year’s election, Cortes said incumbent President Joe Biden would have been a better candidate for the Democratic Party.
“I believe [Biden] was [a better candidate] for the Dems and believe me, I’m not complimenting Joe Biden in any way. I think he’s perhaps the worst president in American history. He’s done enormous damage to this country but if I were a Democrat, and when I look at the polling, I believe I would determine that, believe it or not, for all his very obvious flaws, for all his cognitive challenges, he’s probably the better candidate,” Cortes explained on Monday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Cortes said Biden would have been a better candidate “particularly when it comes to Pennsylvania,” explaining how Biden did not have an authenticity problem among voters as Harris appears to have.
“Kamala has a phoniness problem that Joe Biden didn’t have, at least, for a lot of voters in Pennsylvania. Now, some of your listeners might be saying, wait a second, of course Biden’s a phony and I agree he is, but I’m saying he didn’t have that image. He didn’t have that problem, especially in his home state of Pennsylvania,” Cortes explained.
“That narrative of Lunch Bucket Joe from Scranton, while it’s complete propaganda, it’s garbage, it had currency, it had staying power, and he was considered to be, in many ways, a Pennsylvanian. She is regarded exactly the opposite, and we’re seeing that,” he added.
Cortes also pointed out that, despite having copious amounts of funds to spend to prop up Harris’ image leading up to the election, Harris continues to lose ground with voters with each appearance she makes on the campaign trail—both scripted and unscripted.
“Here’s the biggest problem they face. They have basically endless money to spend. She raised a billion dollars since she got out of the bank because she is the candidate of big business and of the ruling class and we knew we were going to be outspent. Fine. But here’s the thing, the more money they spend, the worse they do because the more they show who she is, that’s problematic,” Cortes said.
“I think they realize they have a problem but the only answers to the problem exacerbate the problem. So it’s they’re in this crazy doom loop,” Cortes added.
With less than three weeks until Election Day, Cortes said Republicans should continue to focus on “the issues” and crack down on Harris’ authenticity and trust issues.
Watch the full interview:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Kamala Harris” by Kamala Harris.
