Harris could present a new challenge for Netanyahu: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.

In today’s edition, chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell explores the new dynamic between Vice President Kamala Harris and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Plus, we look at how JD Vance spent his first full week as Donald Trump’s running mate on defense.

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Harris could present a new challenge for Netanyahu

By Andrea Mitchell

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to Washington expecting a platform for his Gaza policy. 

Instead, he found all attention in the U.S. was on President Joe Biden’s decision to end his campaign — and the new Democratic front-runner, Vice President Kamala Harris, who has placed more emphasis on how Israel conducts the war and its devastating toll on civilians than Biden has, at least until recently.

And when the Israeli leader got to the White House for an Oval Office meeting he had been seeking for more than three years, the price was a second session listening to the complaints of American hostage families. They had already called his visit “political theater,” saying he should have stayed in Israel to focus on getting their loved ones home.

The wily Israeli politician also may have gone too far in publicly trying to tip the scales of the U.S. election. After maneuvering to be invited by the Republican House speaker to deliver a speech to Congress — an unprecedented fourth by a foreign head of state — he made a side trip to Mar-a-Lago on Friday and sat quietly at a televised photo opportunity as Trump called Harris a “radical left person” and a “destroyer,” adding that he didn’t know how a person who is Jewish could vote for her.

Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, is Jewish and has been making speeches around the U.S. decrying the rise in antisemitism. Netanyahu also did not object when his hard-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, endorsed former President Donald Trump’s candidacy this week, a breach of protocol.

As for Harris, who had only met Netanyahu once before when she visited Israel as a senator in 2017, she showed her own political toughness in their first face-to-face matchup. After their meeting, Harris — not her Israeli visitor — made remarks, delivering a pointed summary of their talks. She went on television to declare her commitment to the defense of Israel, but emphasized that the war needed to end because of the catastrophic toll on the civilian population. A senior Israeli official later criticized the vice president anonymously to reporters, accusing her of overly stressing the importance of ending the war.

But in the end, Netanyahu may have been outmaneuvered by a rare American politician he barely knew. Harris’ approach toward balancing military goals versus rescuing the hostages is more in tune with public opinion in the U.S. and Israel than the veteran Israeli leader’s.

Vance spends his first week on the GOP ticket playing defense

By Matt Dixon, Henry J. Gomez, Allan Smith and Garrett Haake

Sen. JD Vance has not had much of a honeymoon. 

In his first week on the campaign trail as Trump’s running mate, the Ohio Republican had to compete for attention with a shake-up atop the Democratic ticket.

Much of the buzz surrounding Vance has ranged from distracting to unflattering. Progressives pounced on his nearly 3-year-old comments about “childless cat ladies” — a critique he extended to Harris, a stepmother of two. Pundits dwelled on polling data that suggested many voters are not yet sold on Vance. Others engaged in largely baseless speculation about whether Trump was already regretting his choice for vice president.

Meanwhile, left-leaning activists and internet personalities have been hammering Vance on social media, mostly ignoring Trump in the process. And Harris’ fledgling White House campaign has kept a particularly sharp focus on the No. 2 candidate on the GOP ticket. The headline of one campaign news release Friday attacked Vance for his anti-abortion views and pronounced him a “creep.”

Running mate rollouts and nominating conventions are two of the best opportunities for a presidential campaign to earn a bounty of positive news coverage, as well as a bounce with voters. Polling shortly after Biden picked Harris as his running mate in 2020, for example, found that a majority of voters approved of the selection, providing a jolt to their campaign.

But a New York Times/Siena poll of registered voters after last week’s Republican National Convention found that 38% of the respondents — a plurality — had a somewhat or very unfavorable view of Vance. Early reviews were more positive in 2016 for Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence, who scored a net favorable rating in a Gallup poll at the time.

A Republican strategist, speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment, said Vance is in danger of violating the basic requirement of a running mate: “Rule No. 1 of being VP is do no harm.”

“It’s going from Double-A baseball to the major leagues,” the strategist added. “There’s an adjustment period. Some people can handle it and some people can’t.”

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That’s all from the Politics Desk for now. If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.com

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