Vice President and Democratic candidate for president Kamala Harris is expected to name a running mate any day now. Whoever Harris picks, expect Donald Trump and his surrogates to attempt to dehumanize, demonize, or delegitimize them. I’ve written two books on Trump, including one specifically on Trump’s language, and this is part of Trump’s playbook and has been for years. 

Trump lacks coherent policies and nurtures grievance. He models incivility and worse, which often inspire his followers to commit or threaten acts of violence against those Trump targets. We saw examples of this during his trials, when judges felt compelled to issue gag orders preventing Trump from using language that put jurors, witnesses, prosecutors, judicial employees, and their family members at risk. Trump was sanctioned for violating those gag orders 10 times, and Judge Juan Merchan threatened to put him in jail if he continued. 

We saw the same playbook on display this week when Trump was interviewed on stage at the national conference of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ). ABC News’ Rachel Scott asked the first question, asking Trump to account for past language that dehumanized, demonized, or delegitimized, among others, President Barack Obama, four congresswomen of color, and a number of Black journalists. 

His response was to lash out at Scott and attempt to delegitimize her and her employer: 

“Well, first of all, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question so — in such a horrible manner, the first question. You don’t even say, hello, how are you? Are you with ABC? Because I think they’re a fake news network, a terrible network. And I think it’s disgraceful that I came here in good spirit.”

The interview deteriorated from there. Scott asked whether it was acceptable for Trump surrogates to refer to Vice President Harris as a “DEI hire.” Harris’ mother is an immigrant from India; her father is an immigrant from Jamaica. She attended Howard University, a historically Black university, and is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, an African American sorority. While a senator she was a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.  

Trump stalled by persistently asking Scott to define DEI. After some back-and-forth, she asked:

“Do you believe that Vice President Kamala Harris is only on the ticket because she is a Black woman?”

His answer stunned the audience: “Well, I can say no. I think it’s maybe a little bit different. So I’ve known her a long time indirectly, not directly very much, and she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know. Is she Indian, or is she Black?... I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn, and she went, she became a Black person… And I think somebody should look into that, too, when you ask a continue in a very hostile, nasty tone.”

The next question, by Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner, was open-ended: “What is your message today?”

He responded with the same incendiary language he used in his presidency, specifically about an invasion of the southern border by upwards of “15, 16, 17 million people.” That language of invasion inspired and was quoted by both the Tree of Life Synagogue shooter who killed 11 people in 2018, and the El Paso shooter who killed 23 people in 2019. 

At NABJ Trump said the invaders were taking “Black jobs.” Asked to define “Black jobs,” he said, “A Black job is anybody that has a job. That’s what it is. Anybody that has a job.”

Trump also falsely blamed Vice President Harris for the “invasion”:

“The first group of people, the Black population, is affected most by that, and Kamala is allowing it to happen. She’s the border czar. She’s the worst border czar in the history of the world. There’s never been a border czar like this.”

Vice President Harris was not a “border czar.” She was tasked in 2021 to work with leaders of Latin American nations to address the underlying causes of migration. In fact, two weeks before the NABJ conference,  CBS News reported, 

“July is on track to see the fifth consecutive monthly drop in migrant apprehensions along the U.S.-Mexico border and the lowest level in illegal immigration there since the fall of 2020, during the Trump administration.”

After the NABJ conference Trump continued to attempt to delegitimize Vice President Harris, posting on his social media platform a photo of Harris in traditional Indian clothing, and reposting a far-right activist’s picture of Harris’ birth certificate that listed her mother as “Caucasian.”  Fact checkers confirmed that at the time Harris was born California birth certificates did not include the child’s race. 

Not Just Trump

It isn’t just Trump who uses the playbook. His surrogates, including his VP pick Senator J.D. Vance, do the same. In a 2021 Fox News interview with Tucker Carlson, Vance name checked Vice President Harris and others as “childless cat ladies” and said, “the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children.”

He has continued this theme in the past week, telling Megyn Kelly on Sirius XM:

“This is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child… what this is fundamentally about [is] the Democrats in the past five to 10 years, Megyn, they have become anti-family.”

What the VP Pick Can Expect

When Vice President Harris names her running mate, be on the lookout for the language of dehumanization, demonization, or delegitimization from Trump and his surrogates. 

If the pick is Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro:

• Expect conflation of Shapiro’s Jewish faith and pro-Israel stance with the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. 

• Expect traditional antisemitic tropes, including being a “globalist,” backed by a “mysterious cabal of Jewish financiers.” Be on the lookout especially for the name George Soros.

• Expect exaggeration of his political views, referring to him as part of the “radical Left.”

• Expect mischaracterization his record, holding him accountable for inflation, crime, lost jobs, etc.

• Expect mischaracterization of each governor’s positions on reproductive healthcare, including saying he is “in favor of abortion through to the ninth month or even after birth.”

• Expect conflation his views with mischaracterized positions of the Biden-Harris Administration.

If the choice is Transportation Secretary Pete Buttegieg:

• Expect a surge of anti-LGBTQ+ tropes that are already prominent in the U.S. culture wars. Expect conflation of Secretary Buttegieg’s sexual orientation with current controversies such as anti-trans and anti-drag legislation, Florida’s don't-say-gay law, bans around gender-affirming care for youth, and discussions of pronouns. 

• Be on the lookout for words like “groomer,” “DEI,” and “Woke.” Also expect other forms of outright bigotry. 

• Separate from his identity as a gay man, expect attempts to discredit his military service. 

• Also expect conflation of his office as Secretary of Transportation with all the policies of the Biden-Harris Administration. 

• Expect exaggeration of his political views, referring to him as part of the “radical Left.”

If Senator Mark Kelly:

• Expect attempts to discredit his military service, trying to turn a positive into a negative, as Trump did with the late Senator John McCain, saying he “preferred people who weren’t captured.”

• Expect conflation of Kelly, from Arizona, with problems at the southern border, including the language of invasion, etc. 

• Expect exaggeration of his political views, referring to him as part of the “radical Left.”

• Expect mischaracterization of his positions on reproductive healthcare, including saying he is “in favor of abortion through to the ninth month or even after birth.”

If governors Tim Walz of Minnesota, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, or J.B. Pritzker:

• Expect mischaracterization of each governor’s record, holding them accountable for inflation, crime, lost jobs, etc.

• Expect exaggeration of each governor’s political views, referring to him as part of the “radical Left.”

• Expect mischaracterization of each governor’s positions on reproductive healthcare, including saying he is “in favor of abortion through to the ninth month or even after birth.”

• Expect conflation of each governor’s views with mischaracterized positions of the Biden-Harris Administration.

If, as expected, Harris selects a cisgender man, expect Trump and his surrogates to conduct bigoted attacks based on gender. Expect also the assertion that the man will be the “real president” with Harris in a subordinate position.