Senator Kamala Harris took it back to her prosecution days, calling Biden’s campaign an “open and shut” case against Trump and Mike Pence, during her introduction as Joe Biden’s VP pick on Wednesday.
Harris and Biden made their first joint appearance as running mates for the 2020 election, at Alexis I. duPont High School in Wilmington, Delaware. Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, said that Harris will now serve as an inspiration for Black and Brown girls across the nation, acknowledging the historic value his selection has. “Today, just maybe they’re seeing themselves in a new way as the stuff of presidents and vice presidents,” Biden said. Harris is the first woman, first Black and first Asian American on a major party ticket.
During her speech, Harris heavily criticized the Trump administration for their mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. “This virus has impacted almost every country, but there is a reason it has hit America worse than any other advanced nation,” she said. “It’s because of Trump’s failure to take it seriously from the start.”
The California senator said the United States now faces the worst public health crisis in a century and that Trump plunged the country into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. “This is a moment of real consequence for America,” she said. “It’s all on the line.”
Harris argued that because of Trump’s leadership during the pandemic, an American dies every 80 seconds, 16 million people are out of work, and millions of children unable to return to school. “America is crying out for leadership, yet we have a president who cares more about himself than the people who elected him,” Harris said of Trump. Before dropping out of the 2020 race herself, she vowed to “prosecute the case” against the President. Harris was a prosecutor in the San Francisco and state attorney general before winning the Senate election in 2016.
Trump defended his approach to the coronavirus in a news conference Wednesday, referring to the U.S. as the “ventilator king of the world,” for the country’s ability to produce thousands for other countries. “I think she’s going to be a big failure, and I look forward to the debate between her and Mike Pence,” he said of Harris.
Elsewhere in her speech, Harris said she’s proud to stand with Biden and added that she was “mindful of all the heroic and ambitious women before me, whose sacrifice, determination, and resilience makes my presence here today even possible.”
