Republicans took to the airwaves on Sunday to criticize a raise Kamala Harriscalling the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee a “dangerous liberal” as US conservatives’ lines of attack on the vice president began to solidify.
Related: Buttigieg: Republicans calling Kamala Harris a diversity hire is ‘bad looks’
In appearances on CNN and Fox News, prominent Republican figures Cotton Tone, Lindsey Graham and former presidential candidate Ron DeSantis tried to paint Harris — who is typically seen as a centrist Democrat — as having far-left politics.
These observations came after Trump tried to insult Harris at a rally Friday night. The former president seemed deliberately mispronounce Harris’ first name stated that she was “the most incompetent, unpopular, far-left vice president in American history” and stated, “She was a slut three weeks ago.”
Speaking with CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Cotton, the U.S. senator from Arkansas, said, “For four years things went well” during Trump’s presidency. He argued that after Joe Biden took over the White House in 2020, with Harris as his running mate, “everything went to hell.”
“And it will be much worse under Kamala Harris,” Cotton said. “Just look at her record. She wants to ban private health insurance, she wants to ban fossil fuel production, she wants to ban guns.”
In 2019, Harris proposed a universal health care plan during her run for president. But the plan did not propose eliminating private health insurance. Harris has not said she wants to ban fossil fuel production. And it’s not true that Harris wants to ban all guns, although she he said high-capacity shotguns – used in many mass shootings in the US – should be banned.
Cotton added: “Kamala Harris is a dangerous liberal. She makes Joe Biden look competent and moderate in contrast.”
In an interview with CBS’ Face the Nation show, South Carolina U.S. Senator Graham also attacked Harris for being too liberal.
“If you expect Vice President Harris to change the direction we are headed as a nation, you will be sadly disappointed,” Graham said of the Biden-endorsed candidate after he halted his re-election campaign on July 21.
“She is the most liberal senator in the United States Senate. There is no liberal horse she has chosen not to ride. She sponsored the New green deame and Medicare for all. Ultimately recasting her as something she’s not – she’s a nice person, but incredibly liberal. I mean, major league liberal,” Graham said.
A noted military hawk, Graham has tried to link Harris to Biden’s Middle East policies.
“When it comes to Iran, Biden and Harris have been a colossal failure in terms of controlling the Ayatollah. They made him rich and Israel is paying the price,” Graham said. He suggested that Iran could “accelerate towards a nuclear weapon” in the four months before the US elections.
Graham was asked about J.D. Vance’s characterization of Harris and others as “childless hotties who are unhappy in their own lives.”
“This idea of trying to marginalize JD and make him a bad person is not going to work, because he’s not a bad person — he’s a good person,” Graham said. The scrutiny of Vance comes as some Republicans are concerned that Trump has chosen him to be his running mate.
DeSantisthe Florida governor who waged a fierce battle with Trump as the pair ran for the Republican presidential nomination, has claimed that “entrenched corporate media” will try to “rewrite history” regarding Harris.
“They’re going to try to present her as something she simply isn’t,” DeSantis told Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures.
“She owns all the policies. She won’t be able to distance herself from them, and most Americans think this country is going in the wrong direction.”
DeSantis admitted that Republicans would have preferred to run against Biden, who had generally trailed Trump by several points in opinion polls before Harris’ introduction into the race essentially reset it.
“Take someone like Harris, who isn’t exactly setting the world on fire — but Biden makes her look like Socrates just because we’re so used to him not even being able to do anything,” DeSantis said.
Byron Donalds, the Republican congressman from Florida who was rumored to be a potential Trump running mate, joined the criticism of Harris on Sunday as Republicans appeared to solidify around the idea of portraying her as an extreme liberal.
“She wanted Medicaid for everyone, which would have easily cost our country $100 billion. She wanted the Green New Deal, the big old Green New Deal, not the scaled-down version that they managed to get through Congress,” Donalds said. Sunday morning futures.
Donalds, who has previously emphasized the need to “unite this country,” they also targeted Roy Cooper, governor of North Carolina, and Mark Kelly, senator from Arizona. Both men are rumored to be potential Harris running mates.
“Knowing these two gentlemen, they are both boring and no one will care. But at the end of the day, it’s about Kamala Harris’ terrible record versus Donald Trump’s successful record,” Donalds said.
