(Houston) Kamala Harris said Thursday she was ready to debate Donald Trump, whom she will face in the November presidential election, accusing the Republican tycoon of trying to avoid this face-to-face.
“Trump agreed to a debate on September 10th. Now it seems he is backpedaling,” the Democratic candidate mocked in a message on the X network, assuring on the contrary that she was “ready.”
Donald Trump had indicated that he was “completely” willing to debate with her, but under different conditions, the choice of the planned channel, ABC, no longer suited him.
The former Republican president had agreed with Joe Biden to debate twice before the November presidential election, on June 27 and September 10.
But the outgoing president’s disastrous performance in this first televised duel finally led him on Sunday to give up running for a second term, after weeks of calls to leave the race, amid concerns about his physical and mental condition.
PHOTO MATT KELLEY, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Donald Trump at his rally in North Carolina on Wednesday
Since that thunderbolt, her vice-president Kamala Harris has taken up the torch and launched her campaign, now with broad support among Democrats.
“They pushed him out, Pelosi, Obama and others,” Donald Trump accused of Joe Biden.
The role that former Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and former President Barack Obama, influential figures in the Democratic Party, may have played behind the scenes in this withdrawal has been widely discussed in the American press for several days.
“Cheek”
Campaigning in Texas on Thursday, Kamala Harris reeled off the campaign arguments she has been honing since Sunday: education, abortion rights, accessible health care…
And she didn’t hold back her attacks on the former Republican president: Donald Trump and his allies “have the nerve to tell teachers to put a gun in the classroom while they refuse to adopt common sense laws on gun safety,” the fifty-year-old told the American Federation of Teachers.
Donald Trump and his extremist allies want to return our nation to failed economic policies.
Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States
The vice president also mentioned the bans in several conservative states of books dealing with subjects related to gender, sexuality or even racism: “We want to ban assault weapons, and they want to ban books.”
Her first campaign video was released Thursday, and the Democrat can boast of having a song by Beyoncé as its soundtrack, despite being known for keeping very strict controls over her music.
Kamala Harris, now almost certain to be officially nominated by her party for the November presidential election, was violently attacked by Donald Trump on Wednesday evening, during a rally in North Carolina.
He had notably accused her of being in favor of the “execution of babies” in an anti-abortion diatribe. The former president also, as with each of his opponents, dubbed her with a nickname: “Kamala-the-liar.”
“Very beautiful moment”
Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, drew the ire of actress Jennifer Aniston on Thursday for his comment about Kamala Harris not having children, disdaining “old cat maids without children.”
“I really can’t believe this is coming from a potential Vice President of the United States,” the “Friends” star, who had publicly spoken out about her failed attempts to conceive, commented on Instagram.
PHOTO LOGAN CYRUS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate
On Wednesday night, Joe Biden, from the Oval Office of the White House, explained his decision to leave the campaign. He assured that he had done so to “save democracy” and make way for “younger voices” – Kamala Harris is more than 20 years his junior.
“A selfless act, something that very few politicians would do,” the White House spokeswoman said Thursday.