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Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich suggested on Thursday that President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden are working to “undermine” Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign in the final weeks of the 2024 election.
Speaking on Mark Halperin’s show 2Way Tonight, Gingrich said that he believes polling shows Harris, the Democratic nominee, is in the “early stages” of her campaign’s “collapse,” and that the presidential race is leaning toward former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee.
Gingrich said that Harris has a “number of big problems” plaguing her campaign in less than a month until the November 5 election, including her recent string of media appearances that have not seemed to help her in the polls.
The former speaker continued that he has a “hunch, as a historian and occasional novelist…that sometime in the last two weeks, Joe and Jill looked at each other and thought, ‘You know, wouldn’t it be a great legacy if Joe’s the only guy ever to beat Trump?'”
He added: “And I think the stuff he’s done to undermine her in the last 10 days is pretty amazing, and I don’t think it’s an accident.”
Gingrich comments about Harris’ “collapse” in polling was in reference to a group of internal surveys released by Trump’s campaign on Thursday, which showed the former president is up in all seven swing states.
Other polling has shown that Harris’ lead in the race, which she has enjoyed for much of her campaign, is starting to shrink as Election Day approaches. On average, however, the vice president is ahead of Trump by 2.5 percentage points nationally, according to FiveThirtyEight’s tracking. Harris also holds a 1-point lead as of Friday in three battleground states: Nevada, Wisconsin and Michigan. Trump is up by 1 point in Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona, per FiveThirtyEight’s averages. The race in Pennsylvania is locked in a dead tie.
Newsweek has reached out to the White House and Harris’ campaign via email for comment on Gingrich’s statement.
Harris has struggled to define how she would approach the presidency differently from Biden, a potential sore spot for her campaign when Trump and Republicans have capitalized on blaming the current administration for issues like the U.S.-Mexico border security and cost of living. When asked during an interview on ABC’s The View earlier this week about what she would have done differently than Biden over the past four years, Harris said, “not a thing comes to mind.”
Some commentators have also accused Biden of being more of a burden than a boost to Haris’ campaign. Former White House adviser Karl Rove, who served under President George W. Bush, wrote in an op-ed published last month that Biden was stealing attention from his running mate in the final push to November.
“The Harris-Walz campaign team has to be less than thrilled about the possibility of a Biden valedictory tour in the months before the election,” Rove wrote in the op-ed for The Wall Street Journal.
Last week, CNN political commentator Scott Jennings posted to X, formerly Twitter, that Biden was “literally trying to destroy her campaign” in response to a clip of the president saying during a media briefing on October 4 that Harris has been “a major player in everything we’ve done,” including in how the White House has reacted to Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
“Biden has put some handcuffs on her,” Jennings, who served under George W. Bush’s administration, said during an appearance on CNN earlier this week. “He’s making it difficult for her to get any separation.”
Biden also raised eyebrows earlier this week after he called Florida Governor Ron DeSantis “gracious” for the federal government’s hurricane relief efforts. The comment came a few days after DeSantis and Harris got into a spat over the governor not picking up a call from the vice president before Hurricane Milton made landfall Wednesday. Harris accused DeSantis of playing political games, but the governor had said that he was unaware the vice president tried to call.
A source familiar with the matter told NBC News that Biden was not aware of the back-and-forth between DeSantis and Harris when he praised the Florida governor at a press conference Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Biden wasted no time endorsing Harris to take his spot at the top of the ticket for Democrats after he dropped out of the 2024 race in late July—after facing weeks from Democratic leadership to do so.
The president has also appeared at a handful of events since Harris launched her campaign, and the vice president has had nothing but positive words for Biden and the pair’s tenure in the White House over the past four years.
“President Biden made a decision that I think history will show was probably one of the most courageous that a president could make, which is he decided to put country above his personal interest,” Harris said Thursday during a town hall event hosted by Univision.
Update 10/11/24, 5:35 p.m. ET: This story has been updated with additional information and background.
Update 10/11/24, 4:58 p.m. ET: This story has been updated with additional information and background.