Similar, but I think Trump cares most about what people who love Trump think.
He tends to dig in on things when he catches a lot of **** from the media and there are just too many people willing to fawn over the dumbest things he says. If he becomes entrenched in attacking her racial identity (and you can see multiple examples of people in this thread trying to explain, defend, or run with what he said instead of just recognizing that it was abysmally stupid and letting it die), then I think that ends up being a big net negative for him.
Example: His answer at NABJ about tying inflation to Biden’s energy policies was one of the best things I’ve heard him say since 2016, but he just glossed over it, lost the thread of the conversation (but definitely not because he’s a shell of his former self, mentally) and repeatedly commented on “black jobs.”
(My experience with the poorest black people is that they care a lot about their grocery bill and they care about as much as I do about jobs that can be performed by unskilled, uneducated, people who mostly don’t speak English and have to be paid under the table. Maybe that moves the needle in the rust belt where the jobs moved to Central America, but I think it’s probably insulting to most black Americans.)
Harris, if smart, looks for things that resonate with moderates.