Criticism from inside his administration

Harris trolls Trump on debate day with criticism from inside his administration

The Harris campaign will air the ad in Philadelphia and around Mar-a-Lago, as well as on Fox News.

By Meridith McGraw

Kamala Harris is trying to get into Donald Trump’s head before Tuesday’s debate, rolling out a new ad featuring scathing assessments of the former president from some former top officials in his administration.

The ad, titled “The Best People,” and shared first with POLITICO, features clips of media interviews with officials from the Trump administration — including Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, national security adviser John Bolton, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley — talking about their decision not to endorse their former boss or warning about the dangers he would pose in a second term.

The ad will run nationally on Fox News and in West Palm Beach — home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort — and Philadelphia media markets on Tuesday, the day he will debate Harris for the first time. It will continue to play throughout the week, according to the Harris campaign.

“In 2016 Donald Trump said he would choose only the best people to work in his White House,” a narrator in the ad says. “Now those people have a warning for America: Trump is not fit to be president again.”

“Here is his vice president,” the narrator continues, as Pence says, “it should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year.”

It follows with criticisms of Trump by Esper, Bolton, and Milley.

“Donald Trump, will cause a lot of damage. The only thing he cares about is Donald Trump,” Bolton says in a clip.

The new ad from the Harris campaign is part of their $370 million digital and television buy.

“This ad will remind Fox News viewers, perhaps even a certain defeated former president himself, about how Trump’s own national security team can’t stomach him anymore because of how he’d put the country at risk,” said Harris-Walz principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks in a statement. “To every American who understands the threat that Donald Trump poses, who cares about upholding the Constitution, who believes in the rule of law, and who knows America is stronger when it leads, there’s a home for you in Vice President Harris’ campaign.”

The ad comes on the heels of some high-profile endorsements by Republicans for Harris last week, including Jim McCain, the son of the late senator and 2008 presidential nominee John McCain, former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney.

“In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” the elder Cheney said in a statement. “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again.”

Trump responded by posting to Truth Social, “Dick Cheney is an irrelevant RINO, along with his daughter, who lost by the largest margin in the History of Congressional Races!”

This summer, the Harris-Walz campaign featured former Trump national security official Olivia Troye and former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Grisham said Trump had “no empathy, no morals and no fidelity to the truth” and both announced that they will be backing Harris in the 2024 election.