Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his chosen running mate Kamala Harris appeared together in Wilmington, Delaware, where Harris delivered her first campaign speech, attacking Trump and promising to get the country out of the COVID-19 crisis.
Biden started the event, held without an audience, by praising Harris as the “right person” and described her as experienced and a “proven fighter.”
“Kamala, as you all know, is smart, she’s tough, she’s experienced, she’s a proven fighter for the backbone of this country. The middle class. For all those who are struggling to get into the middle class. Kamala knows how to govern, she knows how to make the hard calls. She’s ready to do this job on day one,” he said.
Biden said Harris, a child of a Jamaican-born father and an Indian-born mother, personally knows “how immigrant families enrich our country,” as well as what challenges immigrant families face.
After Biden’s remarks, Harris delivered her own speech, criticizing President Donald Trump‘s handling of the coronavirus crisis in the U.S. Trump earlier attacked Harris as “mean” and “nasty.”
“The president’s mismanagement of the pandemic has plunged us into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and we’re experiencing a moral reckoning with racism and systemic injustice that has brought a new coalition of conscience to the streets of our country demanding change,” Harris said.
“America is crying out for leadership. Yet we have a President who cares more about himself than the people who elected him,” Harris added. “As someone who has presented my fair share of arguments in court, the case against Donald Trump and Mike Pence is open and shut.”
Harris criticized Trump for administration’s ineffective response to the coronavirus pandemic as well as brushing off the crisis and American deaths. She called it “a crisis of poverty, of homelessness” that is “afflicting black, brown and indigenous people the most.”
“His refusal to get testing up and running, his flip-flopping on social distancing and wearing masks. His delusional belief that he knows better than the experts. All of that is reason and the reason that an American dies of Covid-19 every 80 seconds,” Harris said of Trump.
Harris also urged Americans to “vote like never before” describing 2020 as “moment of real consequence for America.”
“Everything we care about, our economy, our health, our children, the kind of country we live in, it’s all on the line. We’re reeling from the worst public health crisis in a century. The President’s mismanagement of the pandemic has plunging us into the worst economic crisis since the great depression,” Harris said.