Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance accused Kamala Harris of lying about Joe Biden’s mental health as the Republicans portrayed the new Democratic standard-bearer as a stooge of the unpopular president.
“History will remember Joe Biden as not just a quitter, which he is, but as one of the worst presidents in the history of the United States of America,” Mr Vance said in Virginia on Monday night on his first full day of solo campaigning since becoming Mr Trump’s vice presidential nominee.
The Ohio senator added: “But my friends, Kamala Harris is a million times worse and everybody knows it. She signed up for every single one of Joe Biden’s failures, and she lied about his mental capacity to serve as president.”
Vice-president Harris stuck by her boss until his announcement on Sunday that he was quitting the White House race, following weeks of increasing doubts among many Democrats about his fitness to serve.
Mr Vance demanded that Mr Biden’s Cabinet invoke the 25th amendment to the Constitution and force the president from office, rather than letting him serve until the next president is inaugurated in January following November’s election.
In an interview with Fox News, Mr Trump and Mr Vance meanwhile cast doubt on law enforcement chiefs after a gunman came close to killing the former president at a rally in Pennsylvania.
The pre-recorded interview was aired on Monday as Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle faced a hostile grilling in Congress, admitting to the agency’s “most significant operational failure” in decades but refusing to resign.
Mr Vance slammed the FBI as well, accusing the federal agency of its own failures in allowing 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks to get near Mr Trump with a rifle.
Crooks was flagged as suspicious when he tried to enter the security cordon before the rally, and was then spotted on a nearby roof by attendees who tried to warn police.
"Nobody mentioned it. Nobody said it was a problem,” Mr Trump said. "[They] could've said, 'Let's wait for 15, 20 minutes, five minutes.' Nobody said…I think that was a mistake.”
