President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he was ‘surprised’ Joe Biden had picked Kamala Harris as his vice presidential candidate as she is the "the meanest, the most horrible, the most disrespectful of anybody in the US Senate".
In a press conference just after the announcement of Kamala Harris as Joe Biden's running mate in the 2020 US elections, Trump said,
“[Kamala is] a big tax raiser. She’s a big slasher of funds for our military and she’s got a lot of difficult things that she’s going to have to explain. Plus, she was very, very nasty to...probably nastier than even Pocahontas, very disrespectful to Joe Biden...She said things during the debates, during the Democrat primary debates that were horrible about Sleepy Joe.”
Trump’s 'Pocahontas' jibe is directed to Senator Elizabeth Warren, who had previously claimed to have Native-American ancestry, much like the Disney character.
Trump further stated that Harris is known for being "just about the most liberal person in the US Senate”.
#PhonyKamala Twitter Trend Triggered by Trump
Pinned on President Trump's Twitter feed after the announcement is a new Trump campaign ad that refers to 'Sleepy Joe [Biden] and Phony Kamala [Harris]'.
"Voters rejected Harris. They smartly spotted a phony. But not Joe Biden. He’s not that smart. He’s called himself a transition candidate," a narrator says in the ad.
'Phony Kamala' proceeded to trend on Twitter after Trump's press conference, with Trump supporters vociferously tweeting against Harris.
'Fearless’: Joe Biden on Harris
Former Vice President Biden, in a tweet announcing her as his running mate, described Harris as “a fearless fighter” and “one of the country’s finest public servants”.
Recounting her work as an attorney general, Biden said, “I watched as they took on the big banks, lifted up working people, and protected women and kids from abuse. I was proud then, and I'm proud now to have her as my partner in this campaign.”
“I'm honoured to join him as our party's nominee for Vice President, and do what it takes to make him our Commander-in-Chief,” Harris said in a tweet.
“Joe Biden can unify the American people because he's spent his life fighting for us. And as president, he'll build an America that lives up to our ideals,” she tweeted.
Who is Kamala Harris?
55-year-old Kamala Harris was born in California to an Indian mother and Jamaican father, and is the first American of Indian descent to be named for the vice presidential post in the United States.
Harris is the first Indian-American woman to become a senator, a San Francisco district attorney and California’s attorney general.
In picking Harris as his running mate, Biden had fulfilled his pledge of selecting a woman as his partner for the upcoming polls.
She had decided to run for the US presidential race in January 2019. She put up a spirited fight before announcing on 3 December 2019, that she was dropping out of the race.
She has been a vocal supporter of Biden’s bid for nomination as the Democratic candidate. Many Indian-American groups have extended support to Harris, who took to Twitter to say how ‘women of colour have long been underrepresented in elected office’ and how this is an opportunity to change that.
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