A senior adviser to Vice President Harris’s presidential campaign said on Sunday that former President Trump would be “off the rails” in a second term in office.
“This is going to be somebody who will be unshackled in his second term. There are no constraints. He will be off the rails. There is nobody who is going to be holding him back,” Harris-Walz official Ian Sams said in an interview on MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart.”
The remarks from Sams come as the Harris and Trump campaigns seek to double down on the negative consequences that they say would result from the election of their rival.
The presidential election between Trump and Harris looks to be a nailbiter, with seven swing states likely to determine the winner. In polls, neither candidate appears to have a lead in any of the states more than a percentage point or two.
The Harris campaign has leaned into abortion and the conservative Project 2025 agenda as reasons Democrats should fear a second Trump presidency, two issues Sams leaned into in his remarks.
“He’s going to be able to enact the dangerous Project 2025 agenda that we have been talking about for months that rips away people’s freedoms, whether it is reproductive freedoms, voting rights, economic freedoms that make people pay $4,000 a year more in taxes if you are in the middle class because of his plan,” Sams said.
Project 2025 is an agenda prepared for a conservative presidency. Trump has sought to distance himself from the proposal, writing in multiple social media posts that he does not know those behind the effort and insisting the group does not speak for him. A CNN report found at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration were involved with Project 2025 in some capacity.
Trump has sought to soften his line on abortion in recent weeks, arguing he would veto a national abortion ban. The Harris campaign has warned voters not to trust Trump on the issue given his appointments of three Supreme Court justices who all voted to overturn the Roe v. Wade ruling.
Trump, for his part, has ripped Harris’s plans for the economy and the border, arguing she and President Biden’s policies have weakened the economy and led to increased illegal immigration over the course of Biden’s term.
In recent months, changes in policy at the border have reduced the number of apprehensions of migrants at the border.
The Hill has reached out to the Trump campaign for a response to the Sams comments.
