Kamala Harris' latest appeal to Republicans: Trump is weak on foreign policy

WASHINGTON – Vice President Kamala Harris is taking a page out of Nikki Haley's playbook and hitting former President Donald Trump as weak on foreign policy in her latest attempt to win over disaffected Republicans and GOP-leaning independents.

Harris’ campaign released an ad that showcased former members of Trump’s national security team criticizing the ex-president, characterizing him a “danger to our troops and our democracy” and casting him as unfit for office.

During the presidential debate, Harris told Trump that America’s allies in Europe and NATO are thankful he’s out of office. She brought up Russia’s assault on Ukraine and said that if Trump were in charge, Russian President Vladimir Putin “would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe, starting with Poland.”

Then she made a direct appeal to the more than 700,000 Polish Americans living in battleground Pennsylvania.

The foreign policy-focused outreach is part of a concerted effort by the Harris campaign to win over voters who cast a ballot for Haley, a former United Nations ambassador who made foreign policy the centerpiece of her campaign, in the Republican presidential primary earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Trump’s main foreign policy criticism of Harris has been that overseas wars would not be happening if he were president because he’s seen as strong by other leaders. Trump has characterized the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan as a “humiliation” that “set off the collapse of American credibility and respect all around the world.”

“I will end every single international crisis that the current administration has created, including the horrible war with Russia and Ukraine, which would have never happened if I was president,” he said during his speech at Republican National Convention in July.  “And the war caused by the attack on Israel, which would never have happened if I was president.”

Harris has said relatively little on the campaign trail about her foreign policy agenda outside of her speech at the Democratic National Convention and her comments at the presidential debate.

Her campaign website provides more details and includes the pledge that Harris would “strengthen, not abdicate, our global leadership” and stand up for American interests from China and Iranian-backed groups that the U.S. has deemed to be terrorists.

Foreign policy was once considered Harris’ Achilles’ heel. She did not serve on the Foreign Affairs committee during her partial term in the Senate and has a mixed record when it comes to issues like dealing with the root causes of migration and Central American leaders.

She rushed to catch up on foreign engagements her first year as vice president. She has since traveled to 21 countries and met with more than 150 world leaders, according to her office.

Now, her campaign and former U.S. officials, including Republicans who served in the last administration and Congress, are turning to foreign policy to make their case for her and against Trump.

“For a lot of Republican voters like myself, it is alarming to hear someone like Donald Trump repeatedly laud Viktor Orban of Hungary,” Olivia Troye, a former Trump administration official, told USA TODAY.

More than 200 former George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney alums endorsed Harris in late August. An overlapping group of more than 100 Republican national security leaders endorsed Harris on Wednesday. Former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, former Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney, have thrown their support behind Harris. Troye, a former homeland security adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence, spoke at the Democratic National Convention.

Most Americans support continued assistance, but a Pew study from May found 49% of Republicans now believe the U.S. is sending too much.

Rick Wilson, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a group of moderate conservatives and former Republicans, says Harris has been effective at putting Trump in a box on national security and foreign policy, highlighting his embrace of authoritarian leaders and portraying him as the weaker of the two candidates.

“She's running as a sort of national security centrist that would be familiar from the 80s and 90s to a lot of Republicans,” Wilson told USA TODAY.

Every modern American president has committed the U.S. to being a world leader and building its alliances, except one, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told USA TODAY. He said it demonstrates “how isolated Donald Trump is from that great tradition of Republican presidents.”

“I think that’s why we've gotten so much support from Republicans, because they see the vice president supporting our alliances and supporting democracy around the world,” Harris’ national Republican engagement director Austin Weatherford said.

Republicans against Trump – and Harris

Ex-Trump national security advisor John Bolton – now a detractor of the former president – says he’s not voting for Harris.

While much of Haley’s base was staunch Republicans and independents like Troye who broke with Trump – some anti-Trump Republicans plan to write someone in from their own party rather than go with Harris.

“My sincere belief is I don't think either one of them are competent to be president,” Bolton said.

Haley’s supporters say they’re still making up their minds about what to do in the election.

Munir Lalani, a registered Republican from Texas and former Haley supporter said he was “undecided” on whether he would even vote.

Lalani voted for Trump in 2020. He says the January 6 Capitol attack was too much of a barrier for him to support Trump now. But he is not impressed by Harris’ approach.

“We’ve got everybody confused. Israel does not know whether they can count on us” Lalani told USA TODAY.

He added: “The U.S. can’t be left holding the bag for everyone,” he said.

While some of Bolton’s former colleagues in the Bush administration, where he served as U.N. ambassador, have said publicly that they’re going to back Harris, he told USA TODAY, “There are a lot more former colleagues that have decided they're going to vote for Trump.”

“They're not writing letters about it,” he added.

The most high profile of the Trump defectors Pence has also declined to endorse either candidate. The former vice president says he’ll be staying out of the race. At an August event hosted by conservative radio host Erick Erickson, he cited the “growing abandonment of our allies on the world stage” as a reason for not backing his former running mate.

Harris 'both sidesing' on Israel-Gaza war

Trump has tried to win back support by trying to cast Harris as anti-Israel in the race that will be decided on the margins.

He said in the debate that she hates Israel and that Hamas’ attack would never have happened if he were still president.

“She's the one that caused it,” he claimed. He went on to say of President Joe Biden and Harris, “The leaders of other countries think that they're weak and incompetent.”

Republican Congressman Mike Lawler of New York, a Trump supporter who serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said trying to cast Trump as weak on foreign policy is “projection” on Harris’ part.

“We weren’t having global conflicts under Donald Trump and border crossings were down. The conflicts and the numbers speak for themselves,” he told USA TODAY. “Under Biden and Kamala Harris, the world is a tinderbox and we're in the most precarious place we are in since World War II because of their failed policies of appeasement.”

Lawler also brought up the “disastrous” U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which led to the killing of 13 American service members in the final days of the war. The agreement that paved the way for the U.S. to leave was negotiated by the Trump administration and Biden opted to stick with it.

During the Trump-Harris debate, she dodged the question of whether she was responsible for the withdrawal, instead saying she agreed with President Biden’s decision to pull out.

“Four presidents said they would, and Joe Biden did,” she said.

She also inaccurately asserted during the debate that there were no U.S. soldiers deployed in overseas “combat” zones. The U.S. maintains nearly 1,000 troops on bases in Syria and another 2,500 in Iraq, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. Both places are mired in low-level conflict.

On Israel’s war with Hamas, Lawler characterized the administration as “extremely weak and erratic.”

Lawler cast her support of Biden’s decision in May to withhold a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs from Israel over concerns over them being used in densely populated areas of Gaza, as an example of an “arms embargo” to Israel.

“I mean Kamala Harris has been out there trying to both sides the situation in Gaza,” said Lawler.

Harris has repeatedly said that she does not support an arms embargo on Israel, including in a DNC speech in which she said she both sympathizes with Palestinian people and supports Israel's right to defend itself against the Hamas militants who killed more than 1,200 Israelis and took approximately 250 hostages. According to the Hamas-run Gazan Health Ministry, more than 40,000 Palestinians have died in the ensuing war..

For Republicans who espouse traditional U.S. foreign policy views, Harris’ vision of America’s role in the world is more representative of former Republican President Ronald Reagan’s views than the America First agenda they’re hearing from Trump.

“Whenever you listen to Trump's speech and you listen to Harris' speech on foreign policy and on security matters, if you're a Reagan Republican, you'd say she's closer than Trump is,” said former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican who competed against Trump in the GOP primary.

Hutchinson attended the DNC and said Harris has “made good strides” on national security and the administration has been consistent on its approach to Ukraine and Israel. But he says he can not vote for Harris. He questioned her commitment to a centrist approach to the economy, the issue that voters have consistently said is the most important to them in the election.

Harris’ campaign noted that she’s improved her standing with undecided voters although there’s more work to do.

“We think there's a huge number of Republicans that will come out and be supportive of the vice president,” Weatherford said. “We are going to be talking to those voters every day from now until the election.”

Francesca Chambers and Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy are White House Correspondents for USA TODAY. You can follow them on twitter at @fran_chambers and @SwapnaVenugopal

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Harris' latest appeal to GOP: Trump is weak on foreign policy