Sen. J.D. Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, accused Vice President Harris of plagiarizing former President Trump's policies at an event in Michigan on Tuesday, one of several times that Republican candidates in the 2024 presidential race have accused their Democratic opponents of copying them.
“Kamala's advisors are considering adopting all of Donald Trump's policies, and I've heard that at the debate in a few weeks she will wear a navy suit and a long red tie and use the slogan 'Make America Great Again,'” the Ohio Republican said in his speech.
The comments came just weeks after President Trump made a similar criticism at a rally in North Carolina, where he accused Harris of waiting on him to deliver his economic policy.
“She's waiting for me to put it out there and then copy it,” Trump said of Harris' economic plan.
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Vice President Harris and former President Trump (AP Photo/File)
Harris made the remarks as she continues to be dogged by questions about the details of her policy platform and her unwillingness to give interviews to the media.
Harris has begun to unveil more policy proposals, such as offering $25,000 in down payment assistance to first-time homebuyers, and some of her ideas on the campaign trail are strikingly similar to Trump's.
There is no tax on tips
At a rally in Nevada on August 11, Harris announced that she would end taxes on tipped wages.
“I promise all of you here that if I'm president, I'll continue to fight for working families, including raising the minimum wage and eliminating tip taxes for service and hospitality workers,” Harris said at an event in Las Vegas.
But the pledge came nearly two months after Trump made a similar promise at a June 9 event, also in Las Vegas.
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“If I'm president, I'm not going to tax tips,” Trump said at the time. “We're not going to do that. As soon as I take office, I'll do that as soon as possible, as soon as possible, because this has been a controversial topic for years and years and years.”
Trump spent the next few months touting the proposal, a fact that didn't escape the former president's notice when he heard Harris make the same announcement two months later.
“This was Trump's idea. She has no ideas, only steals from me,” Trump wrote to Truth Social, claiming she took the position for “political purposes.”
Vice President Harris (Kenny Holston Pool/Getty Images/File)
Increase the child tax credit
During an August 11 appearance on CBS' “Face the Nation,” Governor Vance proposed increasing the child tax credit from the current $2,000 per child to $5,000.
“I'd love to see a child tax credit of $5,000 per child,” Vance said. “President Trump has long supported expanding the child tax credit, and I think you want to extend it to every American family.”
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Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, will headline a Trump campaign event in Michigan on August 14, 2024. (Fox News/Paul Steinhauser)
Just five days later, on August 17, Governor Harris released her own economic plan, including a $6,000 tax credit for parents of newborns and a restoration of the pandemic-era child tax credit, allowing some taxpayers to receive a credit of up to $3,600 instead of the usual $2,000.
flip flops?
Ms Harris has also been accused of “shifting gears” on other policy positions, moving closer to Mr Trump than she has in the past.
One of the big issues on which Harris appears to have shifted position is fracking, with her campaign saying last month that the vice president would not support a ban on the oil-drilling technique that has broad support in battleground states such as Pennsylvania.
But the position was a stark departure from what Harris said as a primary candidate at a CNN town hall event in 2019, when she said, “There's no question that I'm in favor of banning fracking.”
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“And we start with what we can do from day one around our public lands, which is something I've taken on in California. I have a history of working on this issue,” Harris said at the time.
Harris also appeared to deny her support for “Medicare for All” and a semi-automatic rifle buyback program, two issues she publicly championed during her unsuccessful primary campaign but which her campaign says she no longer supports.
Harris has also faced accusations of softening her stance on building a wall to secure the southern border, with critics pointing to her support for a bipartisan border bill that would require unspent funds to be used to continue construction on the wall.
Vice President Harris and running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images/File)
“This bill requires Trump's border wall,” Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma told Axios as part of coverage of Harris' position. “The bill itself lays out standards that were set during the Trump administration: where the wall can be built; how it can be built, how high it can be, what type of wall it can be, everything that the Trump administration is building.”
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However, Axios reported that Lankford's office estimated that roughly $650 million would be spent on the wall, rather than the $18 billion Trump requested in 2018, while the Harris campaign argued that the bill does not include any new funding for the physical construction of the wall, but merely ensures the use of funds allocated during Trump's term in office.
Reached by Fox News Digital for comment, a spokesperson for Harris' campaign pointed to the vice president's history of advocating for an expansion of the child tax credit, including in the Biden administration's American Rescue Plan, which expanded the credit to $3,600 for children under age 6 and $3,000 for those ages 6 to 17.
“Unlike Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, VP Harris will support abortion rights instead of taking away them, cut middle-class taxes instead of raising them by nearly $4,000, and unite Americans instead of dividing them,” the spokesperson said. “Most importantly, she opposes Donald Trump and J.D. Vance's dangerous Project 2025 policies.”
