Kamala Harris has put Trump in a box, and he’s struggling to break out

As Democrats emerge from their electrifying convention in Chicago, Trump finds himself on the defense, and it’s not clear he knows what to do.


Former president Donald Trump looks out during a campaign event in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on Saturday. (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post)

Analysis by Dan Balz
August 23, 2024 at 5:00 a.m. EDT

CHICAGO — In his history as a candidate for president, Donald Trump has never experienced anything like the past month. Vice President Kamala Harris, a Black and Indian American woman, has pushed the White alpha male to the sidelines of the national conversation, denying him the spotlight he craves and constantly demands.

Democrats concluded their electrifying national convention here on Thursday night with Harris as the main event, delivering an address sculpted to keep her on the crest of a wave that has changed the contours of the presidential election. … The Democrats are in the game, the former president is in a box, and it’s not clear whether he knows what to do.

Trying to free himself from this bind, Trump has plucked from what was once a tested playbook of tricks that in the past has kept his opponents off-balance and himself at the center of attention. But as the campaign now moves to its next phase, the focus on him and how he attempts to regain his balance will be as much or more of the story compared with how Harris navigates the road ahead.


Vice President Kamala Harris addresses the Democratic National Convention at the United Center in Chicago on Thursday night. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

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As Harris has glided through the past month, Trump has taken to social media or to friendly media interviews in hopes of setting the terms of the conversation, but that has backfired. He has tried invective, exaggeration and lies, something that in the past he used to shift the focus, sometimes to distract from his own problems, at other times to draw attention away from a rival. It hasn’t done what he hoped. … The former president has tried counterprogramming to force the media to look his way this week. It should have been obvious to him that this would be Harris’s week in the same way that the Republican convention was his. The only news Democrats made during his convention was that pressure on President Joe Biden to quit his reelection bid was ramping up. Trump has learned, perhaps painfully, that at this moment, fewer are listening to him. In short, nothing seems to be working the way it once did.

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By Dan Balz
Dan Balz is chief correspondent at The Washington Post. He has served as the paper’s deputy national editor, political editor, White House correspondent and Southwest correspondent. Twitter