(WASHINGTON) — Since getting thrust into the race for president after President Joe Biden announced on Sunday he would step aside, Vice President Kamala Harris and her team have been racing to define her to the American people as their attention turns to the newly energized campaign before Donald Trump could beat her to the punch.
In a shift, the vice president, who has served as San Francisco’s district attorney and California’s attorney general, is leaning heavily into that part of her resume — which was largely a liability during her 2020 bid for the presidency, a campaign she abandoned before the first voters were cast in that primary.
“In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds,” Harris told staffers at her campaign headquarters Monday in what was officially her first campaign event since getting in the race. “Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain.”
“So, hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type,” she added. “And in this campaign, I will proudly put my record against his.”
It’s a framing of prosecutor vs. convict that Harris and her team have pushed aggressively in early days of her nascent campaign
On Thursday, Harris attacked Trump over his legal woes in the first ad of her campaign. In it Harris said her vision of the future includes an America “where no one is above the law” as the former president’s mugshot and newspaper headlines following his conviction on 34 counts in New York flashed on screen.
“Their campaign says, ‘I’m the prosecutor and he is the convicted felon,” Trump said at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, his first since Biden dropped out. “That’s their campaign. I don’t think people are gonna buy it.”
Harris has also worked to define the race as being between someone who is fighting to protect Americans’ freedoms and Donald Trump, who she argues will strip them of their freedom.
“In this election, we each face a question: What kind of country do we want to live in?” Harris asked in that first ad titled “We Choose Freedom” and that features Beyonce’s “Freedom,” which the vice president walks out to at rallies.
“There are some people who think we should be a country of chaos. Of fear. Of hate,” she adds over images of Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio. “But us? We choose something different; we choose freedom.”
Speaking at the American Federation of Teachers convention in Houston Thursday, Harris said, “In this moment, across our nation, we witness a full-on attack on hard-won, hard-fought freedoms.”
Harris, said that those freedoms include the right to an abortion, pointing to the Supreme Court’s overuling of Roe v. Wade, for which she blames Trump, and vowing to fight to restore them.
“When I am president of the United States and when Congress passes a law to restore those freedoms, I will sign it into law. We are not playing around,” she said at the historically Black Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc.’s Grand Boulé in Indianapolis on Wednesday.
But the Trump campaign is trying to define Harris in ways they think could hurt her prospects and that they hope the American people will buy.
Sources told ABC News that Trump’s attacks will largely focus on Harris’ role leading the administration’s effort on the migrant crisis and use it to make the case that the administration failed to secure the border.
Prior to Biden stepping down, Trump began ramping up personal attacks against the vice president, going after her laugh by nicknaming her “Laffin’ Kamala” and dubbing her “nuts.”
“You can tell a lot by a laugh,” Trump said at a rally in Michigan on Saturday. “I call her Laffin’ Kamala. You ever watch her laugh?… She’s crazy. She’s nuts.”
At the North Carolina rally he unleashed a barrage of false claims, referring to her as “Lyin’ Kamala Harris,” as a “radical-left lunatic” and a liar before suggesting that she is okay with the “execution” of a baby.
“She wants abortions in the eighth and ninth month of pregnancy, that’s fine with her right up until birth. And even after birth, the execution of a baby because that’s not abortion. That’s the execution of a baby,” Trump falsely claimed before touting the U.S. Supreme Court decision that sent the issue back to the states.
In the early days of his administration, Biden tasked Harris with leading his administration’s efforts to address the root causes of migration, primarily tackling economic and social issues in the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. But in the face of migrant surges at the border, Republicans have placed blame on Harris, who they disparagingly, inaccurately nickname the “border czar.”
“Kamala Harris was appointed border czar, as you know, in March of 2021 and since that time, millions and millions of illegal aliens have invaded our country and countless Americans have been killed by migrant crime because of her,” Trump said during a press call Tuesday.
The Harris campaign responded to these attacks by pointing the finger at Trump for his opposition to a bipartisan deal to secure the border and address immigration.
“The only ‘plan’ Donald Trump has to secure our border is ripping mothers from their children aand a few xenophobic placards at the Republican National Convention. He tanked the bipartisan border security deal because, for Donald Trump, this has never been about solutions just running on a problem,” Harris campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz said in a statement.
“Like everything with Donald Trump, it’s never been about helping the country, it’s only about helping himself,” Munoz added. “There’s only one candidate in this race who will fight for bipartisan solutions to strengthen border security, and that’s Vice President Harris.”
Trump allies, in a sign they are struggling to define Harris, have also resorted to describing the presumptive nominee as someone who is unqualified and chosen because of her race and gender, with some calling her a so-called “DEI” (diversity, equity, and inclusion) candidate.
Former presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who is now a supporter of Trump, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday that these attacks are “not helpful.”
Harris has seized being thrust into the spotlight with her newly minted campaign, positioning herself as leader during moments she would otherwise have to wait for Biden’s lead.
After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu–separately from Biden’s own meeting—Harris came before the cameras to outline her view on the war in Gaza, which had become a political headache for the president in recent months. (Biden, himself, did not speak with reporters after his meeting.)
Biden has been plagued domestically over criticism of his response to the war and for not being more forceful against Netanyahu as scores of civilians get killed in Gaza, and for continuing to supply Israel with weapons.
And although her policy stances on the war largely don’t stray far from Biden’s, Harris on Thursday notably signaled a future shift.
“We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering,” Harris said. “And I will not be silent.”
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