Donald Trump Paints DNC As Communist Rally in New Kamala Harris Attack Ads

In an apparent reference to the Democratic National Convention, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has posted on X, formerly Twitter, what appears to be an AI-generated image of a woman standing at a podium during a communist rally, with the words Chicago written on the stands.
Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris is due to speak at the convention in Chicago, which begins on Monday.
Trump posted the image on X with no caption on Sunday morning. It had been viewed 11 million times within three hours of posting.
He returned to the social media platform on Monday after a three-year hiatus. The former president was banned following the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, but was reinstated shortly after Elon Musk purchased the company in late 2022.
Before Monday, Trump had posted on the platform only once since his January 8, 2021, ban—sharing an image of his mug shot and a link to his campaign website after being indicted on felony election subversion charges in Fulton County, Georgia, in August 2023.
He has instead been posting on his own social media platform Truth Social, where he has less than 10 percent of his Twitter following.
But since last Monday, he has posted more than 20 campaign-related messages and videos on X, including attack advertisements against Harris, casting her as radically left-wing.
One advertisement, posted on Sunday, focuses on Harris’s 2020 comments relating to the “defund the police” movement. It takes the Harris campaign’s “We Choose Freedom” slogan, and suggests that it really means she wants to close down police stations and grant freedom to criminals.
Harris has said she wants to redirect some money from police departments to other areas, but said the government was “not going to get rid of the police.”
Another advertisement, which Trump posted on Saturday, takes aim at several other political positions it alleges Harris has, including banning fracking, confiscating guns, instigating socialist healthcare, and providing healthcare for illegal immigrants. The advertisement said the vice president is “weak,” “failed”, and “dangerously liberal.”
Harris did support a national fracking ban, but later walked back that position under President Joe Biden’s administration. In a statement, Harris’ team called Trump’s allegation an “attempt to distract from his own plans to enrich oil and gas executives at the expense of the middle class.”
Regarding healthcare for illegal immigrants, Harris spoke on the subject in a 2019 interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, who asked her, “So you support giving universal healthcare Medicare for all to people who are in this country illegally?”
Harris replied: “Let me just be very clear about this. I am opposed to any policy that would deny in our country any human being from access to public safety, public education or public health, period.”
This answer does not commit Harris’ support for Medicare or other benefits for undocumented migrants, only her opposition to policies that would specifically limit rights. The question was not pressed.
While Trump has posted more than 20 campaign videos and images on X since Monday, he has not made any posts on the platform in his recognizable style, which makes heavy use of capitalization, nicknames, and exclamation points. He has continued to post in his signature style on Truth Social.
For example, on Thursday he wrote “Kamala Harris wants NOTHING TO DO WITH CROOKED JOE BIDEN. They are throwing him out on the Monday Night Stage, known as Death Valley. He now HATES [Barack] Obama and Crazy Nancy [Pelosi] more than he hates me! He is an angry man, as he should be. They stole the Presidency from him—”It was a Coup!””
Newsweek has contacted the campaigns of Trump and Harris for comment via email outside of business hours.