Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday made her campaign trail debut in Wisconsin as the presumptive Democratic nominee, going hard at Donald Trump’s criminal record as the unexpected combatants began to size each other up.
“I know Donald Trump’s type,” the former county prosecutor and California state attorney general said in Milwaukee, which last week hosted the Republican National Convention that nominated Trump. “And in this campaign, I promise you, I will proudly put my record against his any day of the week.”
Harris secured enough delegates to lock in her party’s nomination on Monday, a day after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and urged his supporters to get behind his former running mate.
“The path to the White House goes right through Wisconsin. … And we are counting on you,” Harris told supporters in Milwaukee.
She quickly moved to parts of Trump’s past that will likely be fodder for stump speeches.
“As attorney general of California, I took on one of our country’s largest for-profit colleges that was scamming students. Donald Trump ran a for-profit college that scammed students,” Harris said.
“As a prosecutor, I specialized in cases involving sexual abuse. Well, Trump was found liable for committing sexual abuse. As attorney general of California, I took on the big Wall Street banks and held them accountable for fraud. Donald Trump was just found guilty of fraud on 34 counts.”
The crowd erupted in applause, noticeably more energetic than Democratic audiences had been at most Biden campaign stops.
Trump’s response
Harris and Trump have, so far, minced few words in going after one another’s records — one a policy record (hers), the other criminal (his) — with more than a few personal jabs mixed in. Trump told reporters he wants that to continue on the debate stage.
“Yes, absolutely” he said on a press call Tuesday when asked if he would take her on in a verbal sparring match. “I would be willing to do more than one debate, actually.
“I think debating is important for a presidential race. I really do,” he contended. “I think that you have to get — you have sort of an obligation to debate, if you’re the candidate of the Republican Party.”
Trump has been trying out a new derisive nickname for the likely Democratic Party standardbearer: “Lyin’ Kamala.” He had previously used the mocking moniker “Laughing Kamala,” a play on her sometimes-boisterous laugh, which she has said was passed down by her mother. Trump used the “Lyin’” tag in 2016 to question the record of Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas during that year’s GOP primary process.
“Kamala, I call her laughing Kamala. Have you seen her laughing? She is crazy,” Trump told his own loyalists during a Saturday rally in another swing state, neighboring Michigan. “You can tell a lot by a laugh. She is nuts. She is not as crazy as [former Speaker] Nancy Pelosi.” Trump, as always, offered no medical evidence to back up the claim; nor is he a physician.
While recent polls suggest Harris would do better than Biden in a head-to-head race with Trump, she also trailed both nationally and in battlegrounds like Wisconsin. Still, Democratic lawmakers and officials expect the polls to soon shift in her favor. “Excitement” has been the word-du-jour among Democrats since Biden announced his departure from the race on Sunday.
To that end, the Harris campaign on Tuesday said it has raked in over $100 million in donations since Biden’s announcement.
It likely will take several weeks for pollsters to accurately capture the state of what will be a 15-week sprint toward Election Day. But Biden was trailing Trump in the Wisconsin by over 3 percentage points, 46.6 percent to 43.3 percent, according to an average of polls tabulated on Sunday by RealClearPolitics. In the neighboring battleground state of Michigan, Trump was leading the now-outgoing president by just over 2 percentage points, 44 percent to 41.9 percent.
Harris’ campaign got some welcome news moments before she went on stage: A Reuters-Ipsos survey put her up 2 percentage points nationally over Trump, 44 percent to 42 percent. Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio issued a memo, however, stating Harris’ polling “bump” did not change voters’ “discontent” over the economy, high prices, illegal immigration and other issues, contending her “honeymoon” would soon end.
Trump and Co. on Tuesday kept sharpening their attacks on Harris, with the former president writing on social media: “Lyin’ Kamala Harris destroys everything she touches!” He did not point to anything specific. Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller fired off his own post: “Kamala Harris is Dangerously Incompetent.”
Republican lawmakers and Trump aides have quickly seized on Biden putting Harris in charge of trying to address the root causes of illegal immigration. They contend she is the U.S. border czar, a moniker the White House has rejected.
“The United States is not secure with Harris in charge of the border. Period. End of story,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., posted on X, formerly Twitter.
Harris, notably, did not mention immigration nor the U.S.-Mexico border in her first presidential rally, focusing instead on other kitchen-table issues.
“Donald Trump intends to cut Social Security and Medicare. He intends to give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and make working families foot the bill,” said Harris, even though Trump has vowed to protect those domestic programs and deliver a middle-class tax cut.
“They intend to end the Affordable Care Act and take us back to a time when insurance companies had the power to deny people with pre-existing conditions [coverage],” she said to more applause. “America has tried these failed economic policies before. But we are not going back.”
The crowd chanted those last five words for over a minute as Harris joined them, smiling wide.
And though she has yet to select a running mate, that doesn’t mean the Veep lacks campaign-trail partners.
Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who skipped a Biden rally in Madison, Wis., just ahead of the GOP convention, traveled with Harris on Air Force Two. Baldwin, who is in a competitive race for another term in November, told the crowd she and Harris would work to lower health care and other costs for families. “So, Wisconsin, in just 105 days, you will have a choice, a choice between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris … and the stakes of that choice could not be higher.”
Harris’ husband also got involved Tuesday around the same time the top two congressional Democratic leaders endorsed her, brushing aside attacks from Trump and his supporters.
“That’s all he’s got? Look, you heard the vice president yesterday making the case against Donald Trump very clearly. Laid out the case directly, and in a compelling fashion,” Doug Emhoff, the second gentleman, said Tuesday at an event in McLean, Va., near Washington. He had been asked about social media posts Trump put up since Harris emerged as the likely Democratic nominee.
“We’re going to prosecute the case against Donald Trump and his lies, his gaslighting,” he added. “During COVID — the dereliction of duty — inciting an insurrection and all those other things. We’re going to make that very clear. She’s going to be able to make that case.”
Chris Johnson contributed to this report.
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