RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR.: So much for civility: Harris vs. Trump will be as ugly as it gets

Brace yourself, America. And be prepared to wince.

We don’t need a fortune teller to know that this presidential election is going to get really ugly or that it’s all going to happen in a hurry.

Now that Vice President Kamala Harris has emerged as the likely Democratic presidential nominee, and with Donald Trump already having been named the Republican nominee, it’s not difficult to imagine what it’s going to look like when these two finally square off.

To say that Harris and Trump don’t like each other would be a massive understatement.

In fact, both are already drawing contrasts with one another. For Harris — who hasn’t picked her running mate yet but has racked up scores of endorsements and nailed down commitments from most of the Democratic delegates — this election is a choice between a felon and a former prosecutor. And she’s confident that she is in the stronger position because of her life experience.

“Before I was elected as vice president, before I was elected a U.S. senator, I was elected attorney general … to California. Before that I was a courtroom prosecutor. In those roles I took on perpetrators of all kinds,” Harris told staffers just one day after President Joe Biden exited the race and endorsed her to take his place. “Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say: I know Donald Trump’s type.”

Clearly, the vice president isn’t pulling any punches, and she is just getting warmed up.

According to media reports, Harris’ campaign is also likely to flip the age script on the Republicans and argue that, at 78, Trump is too old to serve another term in the White House. Expect Democrats to bring up Trump’s age and mental acuity often, in fact.

Harris is 59, and Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, is 39. Voters have eyes, and they’re going to draw contrasts between the candidates — even those on the same ticket. Trump will not fare well in the process.

Meanwhile, Trump is starting to zero in on Harris. He challenged her intelligence in a post on Truth Social this week, as he continued to pivot away from attacking Biden and toward bashing the person who is most likely to take his place — the vice president.

“Wow, just watching the Fake News, and they’re doing their very best to turn the Worst President in the History of our Country into a ‘Brilliant and Heroic Leader’ (He was heroic because he quit!), and to turn ‘Dumb as a Rock’ Kamala Harris from a totally failed and insignificant Vice President into a future ‘Great’ President. No, it just doesn’t work that way!” he wrote with indignation.

The Harris campaign is going to hit Trump on what he might do if elected, such as implement Project 2025 — a wish list of far-right policies drafted by the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation with input from former Trump staffers. The Trump campaign will counterpunch by looking backward and criticizing Harris for something she didn’t do: alleviate the border crisis by addressing the “root causes” of migration — as she was tasked to do by Biden.

You can bet that conservatives are going to dedicate their best efforts to caricature the former district attorney and attorney general as “anti-law enforcement” and favoring an open border.

This is a fool’s errand. Reality is more complicated. Living in Southern California, one of the epicenters of immigration into the United States, I know a lot of people in the pro-immigrant movement. They can’t stand Harris, who — although she is from California, and she is the daughter of immigrants — has never shown much interest in the immigrant community or done much to make their lives better.

Sadly, Harris’ idea of a solution was to tell desperate migrants with few options to stay home.

During a quick visit to Guatemala in June 2021, the vice president appeared at a news conference with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei. She told those who might be thinking of going north: “Do not come. Do not come. The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our borders.” To that end, she warned: “If you come to our border, you will be turned back.”

Such odd behavior for someone who, according to Republicans — who have a long track record of telling whoppers about immigration — wants to open the border and welcome even more migrants.

That reminds me. You know what’s really ugly? Dishonesty.

Ruben Navarrette’s email address is crimscribe@icloud.com. His podcast, “Ruben in the Center,” is available through every podcast app.