Trump, Vance continue to hammer Harris for 'copying' their policies
Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance took aim at Vice President Kamala Harris for plagiarizing the policies of former President Trump during an event in Michigan on Tuesday, one of several times the 2024 Republican presidential ticket has knocked their Democrat opponent for seemingly copying them.
"Kamala's advisers are considering adopting all of Donald Trump's policies. ... I've heard that for her debate in a few weeks, she's going to put on a navy suit, a long red tie and adopt the slogan ‘Make America Great Again,’" the Ohio Republican said during the remarks.
The remarks came just a few weeks after a similar critique by Trump during a rally in North Carolina, with the former president accusing Harris of waiting on him to release an economic agenda.
"She is waiting for me to announce it so she can copy it," Trump said of Harris’ economic plans.
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The comments come as Harris continues to be dogged by questions about the specifics of her policy positions and her lack of willingness to be interviewed by the press.
While Harris has begun to roll out more policy proposals, such as providing $25,000 in down payment assistance for first-time home buyers, a few of her ideas on the trail have been remarkably similar to Trump’s.
During an Aug. 11 rally in Nevada, Harris announced that she would eliminate taxes on tipped wages.
"It is my promise to everyone here when I am president we will continue to fight for working families, including to raise the minimum wage and eliminate taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers," Harris said during the event in Las Vegas.
But the pledge came almost exactly two months after Trump promised the same at a June 9 event, which was also held in Las Vegas.
"When I get to office, we are going to not charge taxes on tips," Trump said at the time. "We're not going to do it, and we're going to do that right away, first thing in office, because it's been a point of contention for years and years and years."
Trump spent much of the next few months touting the proposal, a fact not lost on the former president when he heard Harris had announced the same thing two months later.
"This was a TRUMP idea - She has no ideas, she can only steal from me," Trump wrote on Truth Social, arguing that she took the position for "political purposes."
During an Aug. 11 appearance on CBS’ "Face the Nation," Vance proposed boosting the Child Tax Credit to $5,000 per child from the current $2,000.
"I'd love to see a child tax credit that's $5,000 per child," Vance said. "President Trump has been on the record for a long time supporting a bigger child tax credit, and I think you want it to apply to all American families."
Just five days later, on Aug. 17, Harris released an economic plan of her own, part of which called for providing a $6,000 tax credit to parents of newborns and bringing back a pandemic-era boost to the Child Tax Credit, a policy that saw some taxpayers able to qualify for as much as a $3,600 credit instead of the typical $2,000.
Harris has also been accused of "flip-flopping" on other policy positions, taking positions more similar to Trump’s than she previously held.
One major issue Harris has seemingly reversed her position on is fracking, with her campaign announcing last month that the vice president did not support a ban on the oil extraction technique that enjoys broad support in battleground states like Pennsylvania.
But that position was a 180 from her remarks as a primary candidate during a 2019 CNN town hall event where Harris said there is "no question I’m in favor of banning fracking."
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"And starting with what we can do on day one around public lands. And this is something I’ve taken on in California. I have a history of working on this issue," she said at the time.
Harris has also seemingly disavowed her support for "Medicare for All" and semiautomatic rifle buyback programs, two issues she publicly touted during her failed primary campaign that the current campaign has said she no longer supports.
Harris has also faced accusations of softening her stance on a wall to protect the southern border, with critics pointing to her support for the bipartisan border legislation that would have required unspent funds to be used on continuing construction of the barrier.
"It requires the Trump border wall," Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., told Axios as part of a report on the Harris position. "It is in the bill itself that it sets the standards that were set during the Trump administration. Here's where it will be built. Here's how it has to be built, the height, the type, everything during the Trump construction."
But the Axios report noted that Lankford’s office estimated that roughly $650 million would be used on a wall instead of the $18 billion requested by Trump in 2018, while the Harris campaign argued that the legislation did not include any new money for construction of a physical barrier and only ensured the use of funds appropriated during Trump’s term.
Reached for comment by Fox News Digital, a Harris campaign spokesperson pointed to the vice president's history of advocating for an expanded Child Tax Credit, including the Biden administration's American Rescue plan that expanded the credit to $3,600 for children under 6 and $3,000 for children between the ages of 6 and 17.
"Unlike Donald Trump and JD Vance, Vice President Harris supports abortion rights instead of ripping them away, cutting middle class taxes instead of raising them by nearly $4,000, and bringing Americans together instead of dividing them," the spokesperson said. "Most importantly, she opposes Donald Trump and JD Vance's dangerous Project 2025 agenda."