Tim Murtaugh, a top communications adviser with US President Donald Trump during both of the president’s election campaigns, has said at a Brussels Signal event the Democrats “have put themselves in a political box” in following woke ideology, thus alienating voters.
Speaking in Brussels on February 19, Murtaugh said that because Democrats in the US clung to DEI philosophy [diversity, equity and inclusion, a catch-all for progressive policies], no one was going to be brave enough to challenge [Democrat presidential candidate] Kamala Harris, regardless of what he called her flaws.
Despite the media and Democrats claiming the opposite, Republicans knew that Harris would end up replacing former US president Joe Biden as a leading candidate for a considerable time, he said.
“There is no way that anyone with the Democratic Party that was going to be brave enough to speak up and say: ‘I don’t think she would be a good candidate.’ There’s no chance anyone would stick their necks out and say that of a woman who is of Indian descent and of African American descent, there is no chance.”
Murtaugh said he had been convinced Harris would be the Democratic candidate, no matter what.
“They were going to be stuck with her and as a matter of fact, she was a terrible candidate.”
He said the Trump campaign had an easy time switching from attacking Biden to attacking Harris because “they were one and the same”.
She inherited all the promises of the Biden administration alongside her “extremely liberal” political background, which could be used against her in the campaign, Murtaugh said.
According to him, the Trump campaign was ready for that.
He added that in his more than two-decades-long career as a communications adviser, he never saw the media “gush and fall in love” so deeply with a candidate like they did with Harris.
Murtaugh said he believed the media went into overdrive because they knew that people would otherwise realise Harris was “a terrible candidate”.
He referred to what he termed the unnaturally created “Brat-summer”, which was pushed all over the US media. “It was like they were promoting a Taylor Swift concert,” Murtaugh said.
Harris was framed as “joy” by the media, while Trump was depicted as Satan, he added.
He pointed out that Harris, after being nominated as the top candidate, was not interviewed by the media for 40 days, something never seen before, he added .
Murtaugh assessed that was a strategy to shield her from tough questions about her past, heavily left-wing positions. Meanwhile, her campaign staff worked to persuade the media that she had shifted her views.
While he was focused on the US elections, he said there appeared to be parallels with Europe, where politicians seemed stuck behind ideologically driven policies, such as the “green” agenda, migration and the war in Ukraine.
These policies have grown increasingly unpopular, contributing to negative economic impacts and fuelling the rise of populist parties that promised change, it could be argued.
Just like in the European Union, the economy and migration were the main topics of the US presidential elections.
Another similarity was the tendency of Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, to avoid having discussions with the media although they were in general supportive of her.
Murtaugh went on to talk about the latest campaign, describing Trump as the perfect man at the perfect moment, while the Democrats had made many mistakes.
He also gave a few personal insights, in his own name, about where he saw US politics and international relationships evolving.
The full event will be online soon and will be posted on Brussels Signal.
