IS IT THE ECONOMY STUPID? Not for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. These days, its closing message on TV may as well be “it’s the trans, you fools.”

In the past five weeks, Trump’s operation has spent more than $29 million on TV ads criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris for supporting transgender surgeries for inmates and illegal immigrants in detention, according to data from the media tracking firm AdImpact. That makes the topic, by far, the biggest focal point when it comes to Trump’s ad spending—one of the best barometers of messaging priority there is. By contrast, the campaign has spent $5 million over that same time period on TV ads on the economy, making that topic their fifth-most emphasized.

The campaign’s elevation of transgender issues above the economy constitutes one of the biggest bets in presidential politics. The former rates as among the least important to voters according to public opinion polls; the latter their top concern. The trans-heavy focus also seems to conflict with months of insistence—from the Trump campaign to the pundit class—that the ex-president will win because of inflation and jobs.

Executing such a gambit at this late stage of the campaign represents a major roll of the dice: one that could either reset culture war politics for years to come in presidential races or, if Trump loses, go down as a major, even historic, tactical blunder.

But Trump pollster John McLaughlin said that viewing the campaign’s emphasis on trans issues as a tradeoff with its focus on the economy represents a shallow understanding of “asymmetrical political warfare.” Presidential races aren’t as much battles over policy plans, he said, as they are character contests.

“In that character contrast, these cultural issues become symbols of those characters,” McLaughlin said. “They don’t have to be the top issue, but they have to make a values-connection with a majority of voters, and this is symbolic of why her character doesn’t connect with a majority of voters.”

Trump has so far run three ads that each feature video of Harris in 2019 boasting about her advocacy as California attorney general for the surgeries for the incarcerated. The ads, which have been condemned by trans advocates as transphobic and cruel, are designed to reinforce the Trump campaign’s message that Harris is “dangerously liberal.”

They come as Trump is grappling with vulnerabilities of his own. The ex-president has repeatedly stumbled on abortion—a losing issue for him—and endured a withering assault from Harris and her allies who describe him as dangerous, unstable, loony, too old, a dictator wannabe, a crook, and a felon with a penchant for sexual assault.

On Wednesday night, those same attacks came to a head. At a CNN town hall, Harris called Trump a “fascist” and repeatedly noted that his former chief of staff said he praised Hitler’s generals. Earlier in the evening, the Guardian reported that a former model (with ties to a group supportive of the Harris campaign) had accused Trump of groping her after she was introduced to him 30 years ago by notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in Palm Beach. Trump denied the accusations.

Harris advisers believe that those attacks have blunted the momentum that Trump has built in recent days. But they’re more bullish on the gains that they’ve made on the economy, which they attribute, in part, to the Trump campaign’s decision to switch its emphasis to trans issues. Polls indicate Harris is closing the gap with Trump over who can better handle the economy, which a campaign aide highlighted Wednesday with the release of a new Morning Consult battleground-state survey.

But Trump’s team has downplayed those findings. More generally, it is willing to cede points on the economy in return for driving up Harris’s negatives and driving down her topline poll number in her head-to-head matchup with Trump.

That same Morning Consult survey, which was released by Bloomberg, showed that Harris’s unfavorability ratings have tick up since its last poll in late September. During that time, Harris’s lead has been cut from an average of 3 percentage points in the swing states to less than half a point overall.

The Harris campaign declined to comment. But Steve Schale, who leads the pro-Harris super PAC Unite the Country, expressed a measure of concern over the effectiveness of Trump’s ad blitz. He noted that it seemed derived from the playbook that Trump’s leadership team of Susie Wiles and pollster Tony Fabrizio used when they led Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s scorched-earth 2010 gubernatorial campaign.

“I’ve been up against the Susie playbook and learned how it works the hard way. It’s pretty simple: drive up the negatives on the opponent to [the] point that the choice comes down to one thing that her candidate has an advantage on—in this case, the economy,” Schale said. “I suspect that’s what’s going on here with their ad strategy—driving Harris negatives down into the barrel with Trump—and that’s a real thing my side has to guard against.”

An adviser to the Trump campaign, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions, said Fabrizio was initially concerned about advertising so heavily about trans issues, but the campaign’s research showed it moved voters. The adviser also conceded that Schale was right about the campaign’s strategy, which was rooted in principles that Fabrizio and fellow Trump pollster McLaughlin learned at the feet of Arthur Finkelstein, an adviser to Richard Nixon.

“They’re trying to make [Trump] a crook,” the adviser explained. “But Tony and John were understudies of Arthur Finkelstein and as he used to say: crook beats fool.”

IN CONTRAST TO HER 2020 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, Harris has been mum about trans issues in this race. But when pressed on the matter in a contentious interview last week on Fox News, she pointed to a New York Times story that detailed how the Bureau of Prisons during Trump’s presidency began offering “gender affirming care” under court order.

“I will follow the law, and it’s a law that Donald Trump actually followed,” she said. “Now it’s a public report that under Donald Trump’s administration, these surgeries were available to, on a medical necessity basis, to people in the federal prison system.”

Only two inmates have received transgender surgery in the federal prison system, starting in 2022, according to the Times. The Bureau of Prisons did not return a call or email for confirmation or comment. California’s Department of Corrections also did not respond Wednesday to a records request for the number of transgender surgeries it has provided. But advocates say one reason it’s hard to know how many prison inmates and undocumented immigrants in detention have received transgender therapies is because it’s such a small subset of people.

The Trump campaign’s focus on trans issues is historic. As The Bulwark first reported last month, Trump is the first candidate in presidential history to run a trans-related attack ad in a general election. His decision has been mimicked by Republicans up and down the ballot, who have leaned aggressively on ads attacking their Democratic rivals for supporting transgender athletes in female sports or surgeries for minors.

In all, since President Joe Biden left the race on July 21, Republicans have spent about $120 million on ads attacking their Democratic rivals over trans issues, according to AdImpact data. Of that, Trump and the two super PACs supporting him—Preserve America and MAGA Inc.—account for about one third of the spending, almost $40 million, in the past five weeks.

Trump’s campaign isn’t just spending big on TV. Since last month, it has dropped $1.7 million on promoting the anti-trans surgery ads on Google, mainly YouTube, according to an analysis by Andrew Arenge, director of operations for the University of Pennsylvania’s Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies. That analysis showed, however, that the Trump campaign was still more committed to the economy on YouTube, spending nearly $1.8 million on the issue on that platform.

Share

Trump also mentions the issue repeatedly on the trail, often raising the specter of children are undergoing transition-related surgeries at their schools. U.S. Senate candidates like Eric Hovde in Wisconsin and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz have followed suit. Their opponents, Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Texas Rep. Collin Allred, responded with ads calling the Republicans liars.

Curt Anderson, a Hovde adviser, said in a text message that Democrats’ response ads and Harris’s reticence to engage on the issue showed how damaging it is for them. He said the money Trump was spending on ads made sense because “you have to have massive throw weight to get any message through.”

Democrats and trans advocates say Republicans are overplaying their hand, pointing to a 2024 GLAAD Voter Poll that showed 53 percent of voters said they opposed a candidate who speaks too much about “restrictions that target trans youth.” But the polling on transgender issues is generally nuanced, with voters largely opposed to discrimination while also favoring limits on transgender athletes in female sports and surgeries for minors. The issue of taxpayer subsidies for transgender surgeries for inmates has not been publicly polled.

The saturation spending by Republicans has appalled trans advocates, who worry it has made trans Americans political pariahs and punching bags. To counter that, the nonprofit trans advocacy group GRACE launched a counteroffensive this week by releasing a new digital ad featuring an Army veteran who opposed home-state politicians in South Carolina interfering with his family’s healthcare decisions concerning his trans child. The advocacy group GLAAD and its partner organization Ground Media have also begun an ad series of their own.

On Thursday, Ground Media unveiled a study it had conducted showing that Trump’s first trans-related ad had not improved his political standing, but had hurt perceptions of trans people.

"What this demonstrates is that attacking the trans community isn’t just a weak and feckless political strategy—it’s a deeply cynical one,” David Rochkind, CEO of Ground Media, said in a written statement. “These ads weaponize trans-identity to sow fear and division, making our country less safe for everyone.”

Share The Bulwark