The 2024 presidential campaign may be the closest race in modern history. The candidates are in the home stretch, receive endless advice from the media and their champions who experience the slightest bump will carry one or the other to victory.

I will give advice to both.

First, Vice President Kamala Harris. Media contributors like James Carville and Frank Luntz are urging Harris to stop her negative attacks on former President Donald Trump and instead adopt a positive narrative in her final argument. This is what is done conventionally.

Trump pledges to create compensation fund for victims of illegal immigrant crimes

But this time they are wrong.

Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump smiles during a Hispanic panel discussion at the Beauty Society October 12, 2024, in North Las Vegas, Nevada. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

Focusing on a positive message will be difficult at best. Even as mainstream media promotes the Biden-Harris record, domestically and internationally, it remains fraught with failure. Any promise to continue these policies will backfire on the undecided. His socialist vision is one that America simply does not support.

Harris attacks relentlessly with deliberately false personal insults – intended not only to hurt Trump but to destroy him politically. She claims a long list of lies: he is racist; he is a fascist; he admires Hitler; he is a dictator; he will start a war; he organized riots; he is disturbed; he is unstable. Then the left-wing media constantly repeat his words.

If I had Harris’ ethics, I would do it too. She knows that if she insults him dishonestly, she will be denounced by the conservative media. So what? It’s the other media that count. Harris knows that she and her lies will not be exposed by any of them. It is an astonishing fact that throughout this campaign, first with Biden but more aggressively with her, there has been one ad hominem insult proven false after another that has never been verified by the national media.

There is yet another reason to continue these personal attacks. Trump has a famously thin skin and can be baited. Plus, her responses can be just as mean – which is what she wants. If the media covers the story, it will be presented as a she-said-he-said affair, and it will feature a gentle but powerful line from Harris, one, for example, calling him unhinged. This will be followed by Trump’s selectively edited denial. When that happens, she controls the narrative and she wins.

Do you doubt me? Go back and analyze their debate. That’s precisely what she did all night. He bit the bait several times and fought back. She controlled the narrative.

What should Trump do? Ignore it and do the exact opposite.

Critics say Trump is completely undisciplined. This is not the case. No undisciplined man builds a multibillion-dollar business empire and then gets elected president of the United States. Trump is disciplined when he wants to be. He must now be disciplined.

He likes political boxing, especially against featherweights. But he must accept that while general attacks may excite rally attendees, they are no longer his target audience. He must sell the undecided. Rally rhetoric won’t drive these old dogs away. But then, what?

Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (R) shakes hands with former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a presidential debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on April 10 September 2024. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

Both candidates are still in rally mode. Trump had a huge event at Madison Square Garden in New York and the media was embarrassed to complain about it. Harris just gave a speech at the White House. The media loves his canned speeches.

Trump must understand that he has another weapon, just as powerful, which will attract skeptics to his camp. I think Trump has historically underestimated the enormous power he has to convey a positive message.

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My advice to Trump is to analyze his State of the Union speeches. Every year, his enemies in and out of the media expected him to be off-script and combative, and they were ready to confront. Instead, he offered them a change each time. He did the opposite.

He was positive, reviewing his record for the past year, which still contained many accomplishments, while laying out his agenda for the coming year, which was commonly ambitious and attractive to a strong majority of Americans. He was the statesman, and after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insultingly ripped up his speech on camera, she was the raging failure.

Critics say Trump is completely undisciplined. This is not the case. No undisciplined man builds a multibillion-dollar business empire and then gets elected president of the United States. Trump is disciplined when he wants to be. He must now be disciplined.

Go back and rewatch his speech in Normandy. It was a masterpiece that presented him as the leader of the free world. Go back and reread his speech in Warsaw. It was as powerful as anything ever proposed by President Ronald Reagan or British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, an all-out defense of Western civilization, causing hundreds of thousands of Poles to roar their approval, and some to weep.

Trump has something that Harris does not: a winning record, a winning agenda, and a winning vision. She avoids his record because not only is it politically radioactive, but socialism has a rich history of utter failure everywhere.

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Donald Trump just needs to tell his story, to recall what was accomplished during his presidency. Just say he will do it again, both at home where so many are suffering, but also abroad where the world is near boiling point. Outline his vision for his city on the hill.

Make this his closing argument and Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States.

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