Trump's 'lie machine' has failed to take down Kamala Harris and Tim Walz: analysis

Former President Donald Trump and his campaign have been trying to drive up Vice President Kamala Harris' negatives.

However, if the polling averages at FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics are anything to go by, these efforts have been failing as Harris's favorability rating has trended into positive territory whereas Trump's have remained negative.

Writing in his Off Message newsletter, progressive Brian Beutler argued that Trump's thus-far unsuccessful attempts to drag Harris down to his level demonstrate that his "lie machine" appears "broken."

To illustrate his point, Beutler examined the attempts to run a "Swift Boat"-style campaign against Harris's running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, by attacking his military record.

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"They plucked a handful of comments and innocent misstatements he made over his 20-year political career out of context to disparage his military service and portray him as a faker," he wrote.

"They lied about his gubernatorial record, and tried to insinuate that he was a predator and a pervert. They deployed the same kinds of tactics that helped Republicans defame and defeat John Kerry, Max Cleland, Hillary Clinton, and other high-profile Democrats over the years. And yet…. Today, Walz is the most favorably viewed of the four candidates at the top of the ticket, and the only one who’s been consistently popular. It all amounted to nothing."

What makes this particularly remarkable, wrote Beutler, is that Trump has not improved his own favorability numbers despite being the target of two separate assassination plots in recent months.

While a more cunning politician might express regret for past rhetoric and pledge to tone down his rhetoric, Trump has moved on to pushing lies about Haitian immigrants eating people's pets.

"The Trump we have, and the sleazy pretenders who mimic him, have taken the opposite tack of claiming Democrats keep trying to kill him," Beutler contended. "Let’s set aside that this is gross and untrue. The main thing is: Nobody outside Trump’s existing pool of supporters has time for his s--t anymore. Everyone at some level knows that he sowed the maelstroms that now threaten to sweep him into oblivion."