President Trump may have settled on the descriptor “radical left San Francisco liberal” for his new general election opponent, Vice President Harris — a far cry from his use of the label “Sleepy Joe” when the vast majority of voters felt President Biden was too old to do the job. In a discussion on Monday night with Elon Musk on his social media platform X, the former president tried out the new messaging that worked to the benefit of Republicans for years when going after leading politicians like Speaker Pelosi and Senator Feinstein. 

About halfway through their two-hour discussion on Monday, Trump unveiled his “radical left” descriptor after he spent time talking about the attempted assassination that apparently nearly took his life and what he termed the “coup” that toppled Mr. Biden’s re-election bid. He used the San Francisco radical moniker repeatedly, also claiming that Ms. Harris had “destroyed” the city, and later all of California, during her years in elected office there. 

He added that she was “to the left” of Senator Sanders, presumably referring to a study of senators’ voting records between 2019 and 2020 that found Ms. Harris was the second most liberal member of the upper chamber, behind only Senator Markey. 

One of the greatest challenges for the Trump campaign is that Ms. Harris has — according to polling — not been associated with some of the greatest perceived failings of the Biden administration, including inflation and the influx of migrants at the southern border. Trump spent the latter half of the discussion making clear that he viewed Ms. Harris as nothing more than a toady in instigating these crises with Mr. Biden. 

“The election is coming up, and people want to hear about the economy. Food prices are up … and this stupid administration allowed this to happen,” Trump said. “And it’s a shame. And that’s the thing people most care about, in my opinion.” 

On the border, he repeated a line of attack he often used against Secretary Clinton and Mr. Biden when he ran against the two politicians in 2016 and 2020: asking why they didn’t accomplish what they said they wanted to accomplish when they both had decades-long careers in Washington. 

“Kamala was the border tsar, and now she’s denying it,” he said. “She’s saying she was strong on the border, ‘We’re gonna be strong.’ Well, she doesn’t have to say it — she could close it up right now. They could do things right now.”

Trump also hit Ms. Harris’s running mate, Governor Walz, as another “dangerous” liberal who could not be trusted to protect the country. 

By Tuesday morning, the Trump campaign boasted that more than 20 million X users had either listened to the conversation live or after the fact. “While the Fake News works overtime to discredit the unprecedented access President Trump is granting to everyday Americans — and cover for Kamala’s historic inaccessibility — the fact remains that President Trump is reaching voters where they are,” the Trump campaign said in a statement. 

“Kamala, by contrast, is cowering in fear, terrified to speak off script — and afraid she’ll be exposed for who she is: weak, failed, and dangerously liberal,” the campaign added. 

During the discussion with Mr. Musk, one of Trump’s aides posted a photo to X showing the former president sitting at a table at his Mar-a-Lago estate with several top campaign officials, including a senior advisor, Dan Scavino, and his spokesman, Steven Cheung, among others. 

Documents were scattered on the table, presumably used to describe certain policy goals and perceived failures of the Biden–Harris administration. At one point, Trump was heard on the call asking an aide to get him some numbers about carbon emissions to discuss Ms. Harris’s “radical” climate policies that he deems unnecessary. 

In a statement after the X discussion had ended, the Harris campaign brushed off the event, saying it was nothing more than two billionaires telling each other how great they are. 

“It’s not enough that Musk has pledged to donate millions of dollars to help reelect Trump. He’s using his purchased platform — one of the largest social media sites in the world — to spread Trump’s unhinged and hateful agenda to millions of users,” the campaign wrote.