Washington:
US Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday acknowledged the difficult climb to defeat Donald Trump in November, but said her newly minted presidential campaign would prevail over her Republican rival’s “wild lies.”
As Trump prepared to speak at a bitcoin conference in Tennessee, Harris spoke at a fundraiser in Massachusetts with celebrity guests including singer-songwriter James Taylor and cellist Yoyo Ma.
“We are the underdogs in this race, but this is a people-powered campaign,” she told the crowd at the event, which her campaign said would bring in $1.4 million.
“You may have noticed that Donald Trump has resorted to some crazy lies about my record. And some of what he and his running mate are saying, well, it’s just weird,” she said, the latest joke adopted by Democrats when describing the Republican attacks.
The most recent of these included Trump’s comments at a religious convention on Friday night, where he accused Harris of being an anti-Semite who plans to allow the murder of newborn babies.
“She doesn’t like the Jewish people. She doesn’t like Israel. That’s the way it is,” he said of the vice president, whose husband is Jewish.
In perhaps his most outrageous statement of the night, he claimed that Harris wanted to enshrine in federal law the right to “tear the baby out of the womb in the eighth, ninth month and even after birth – execute the baby after birth.”
Trump, who at 78 is now the oldest major party candidate in history, is struggling to reorient an election against someone two decades younger, hoping to face 81-year-old Joe Biden, beset by concerns about his illness.
Seeking to become the first female president in US history, Harris is tasked with quickly mounting a campaign against an opponent who has been in near-permanent re-election mode since becoming president in 2016.
His late-initiated bid for the White House enjoyed an early boost. Polls that showed Biden steadily falling behind Trump now show Harris in a very close race.
She has won the support of Democratic heavyweights, including Biden himself and, more recently, Barack and Michelle Obama.
Torianna Parrish, 34, was among the crowd greeting Harris upon her arrival Saturday afternoon at the Westfield, Massachusetts, airport.
“I wanted to show that there is power in numbers. I wanted to show my support,” she said.
“We’re rooting for her and we want to see her make this country what it needs to be.”
Harris was introduced at the Colonial Theater in Pittsfield by Taylor, who said, “Let us honor the woman and the moment and let our ardent support be the wind in her sails. Our hopes go with her and she represents us all.”
(Except the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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