Three key objectives Harris is expected to touch on during DNC speech
(CHICAGO) — Vice President Kamala Harris is setting out to achieve three key objectives in her highly anticipated Democratic National Convention speech Thursday night, according to a campaign official.
The vice president will tell her story of being raised by a working mother in a middle-class neighborhood — sharing how her background means she knows the everyday joys and challenges experienced by middle-class families like hers, explaining how she shares those values, the official said.
She will also discuss how she became a prosecutor in order to protect others, be they survivors of sexual abuse or homeowners impacted by the foreclosure crisis, a Harris-Walz official told ABC News.
She will point out the dangers posed by former President Donald Trump’s campaign, specifically the Project 2025 agenda, which will rip away people’s freedoms, increase the cost of living, and take the country backward, the official said.
In contrast, the official told ABC News Harris will present a New Way Forward — an optimistic agenda that provides economic opportunity and protects fundamental freedoms for all Americans.
Harris will root her optimism about the future in her faith in the American people. She will work to make a stark contrast with Trump, sharing her belief in the promise of America, according to the campaign official.
And she knows that loving your country means being willing to fight for its fundamental ideals. She is driven by a deep sense of patriotism and a desire to be a president for all Americans, the official told ABC News.
(PHILADELPHIA) — Vice President Kamala Harris will face a National Association of Black Journalists panel in Philadelphia on Tuesday where race in her campaign will be a likely topic, something she has shied away from focusing on — a stark contrast from her 2019 run for president.
At a similar NABJ panel interview in July, former President Donald Trump got into a fiery back-and-forth with reporters and falsely questioned Harris’ race.
“So I’ve known her a long time, indirectly, not directly, very much, and she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” Trump said during that heated exchange. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”
Harris — the child of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, both immigrants to the United States — has not directly responded to Trump’s comments. In an August interview with CNN, after being asked to comment on the personal attacks Trump has lobbied at the vice president surrounding her racial identity, Harris dodged.
“Same old, tired playbook,” she told the network. “Next question, please.”
And when asked to comment on the same attacks during ABC News’ debate last week, instead of speaking about her own racial identity, Harris chose a more generic answer.
“I think it’s a — a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president who has consistently over the course of his career attempted to use race to divide the American people,” she told ABC News’ David Muir.
MORE: READ: Harris-Trump presidential debate transcript Harris is not new to people questioning her so-called “Blackness.” During her presidential run in 2019, Harris faced questions about whether she was Black enough to identify as a Black candidate.
“I’m Black, and I’m proud of being Black,” Harris said on “The Breakfast Club” radio show in February of that year. “I was born Black. I will die Black, and I’m not going to make excuses for anybody because they don’t understand.”
Harris’ 2019 campaign also put a larger focus on race compared to her current run for president.
At the NBC debate in 2019, Harris strong-armed her way into the opportunity to take on then-Vice President Joe Biden on efforts to desegregate public schools, specifically school busing programs.
“As the only Black person on this stage, I would like to speak on the issue of race,” Harris said, interjecting as the moderators were moving on to someone else.
During that debate, Biden brought up his ability to work with politicians across the aisle, fondly recounting his relationship with segregationist Sens. James O. Eastland of Mississippi and Herman E. Talmadge of Georgia. Harris, who directly benefited from busing programs, jumped in to respond.
“It was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose busing,” Harris continued. “And you know, there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.”
In another departure from her time as a candidate in 2019, as vice president, and as Biden’s running mate during his bid for reelection, Harris hardly mentions one of her top issues: Black maternal mortality.
In 2020, Harris had a section on her website’s issues page devoted to “Health Justice For Black Communities,” with a commitment to “fight to end the Black maternal mortality crisis.” Now, her website only says she’ll “combat maternal mortality” more generally. She introduced the Maternal CARE Act to tackle the issue while in the Senate. The bill mentioned “Black women” 10 times.
Despite being asked multiple times by reporters about the unsubstantiated claims made by Trump and his running mate Sen. JD Vance that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating residents’ pets, Harris has declined to comment.
ABC News has reached out to the Harris campaign for comment on the shift between her two presidential campaigns, and whether this is part of political calculation ahead of the general election. They have not responded by the time of publication.
The NABJ discussion will take place at the headquarters of Philadelphia’s NPR station WHYY and will be moderated by Politico’s Eugene Daniels, WHYY’s Tony Mosely, and theGrio’s Gerren Keith Gaynor.
“We look forward to our members and student journalists hearing from Vice President Harris as our panel asks the tough questions that are most pressing to the communities served by NABJ members,” NABJ President Ken Lemon said in a statement last week.
Her NABJ appearance marks her third high-profile interview since announcing her candidacy — following sit-downs with CNN and WPVI-TV in Philadelphia.
(WASHINGTON) — Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, attempted to enlist support from the U.S. Ambassador to Italy in 2016 to arrange a business meeting on behalf of Burisma for a prospective energy deal, according to his attorney.
The New York Times first reported the overture, which occurred during Joe Biden’s time as vice president.
In a statement to ABC News on Tuesday night, Abbe Lowell, an attorney for Hunter Biden, characterized Hunter Biden’s letter to John Phillips, the U.S. ambassador in Rome at the time, seeking a “simple introduction” as a “normal and proper practice.”
“No meeting occurred, no project materialized, no request for anything in the U.S. was ever sought, and only an introduction in Italy was requested,” Lowell said.
The New York Times reported that it had secured records related to Hunter Biden’s request after a lengthy legal fight with the State Department. The newspaper said in Tuesday’s news article that it initially filed the request for these records in June 2021 and later sued when the department failed to turn them over.
The Times also reported that a State Department official said the timing of the release of these particular documents — just weeks after Joe Biden ended his presidential campaign — was a coincidence.
The actual text of Hunter Biden’s 2016 letter to Ambassador John Phillips was not included in the documents obtained by the Times. But according to Lowell, Hunter Biden reached out to the embassy to see “if they could make a simple introduction of Burisma’s Geothermal company to the President of Tuscany where such projects were being considered.”
The response Hunter Biden received from an embassy aide suggested unease with official U.S. cooperation.
“I want to be careful about promising too much,” a Commerce Department official based in Rome replied to Hunter Biden, according to the Times. “This is a Ukrainian company and, purely to protect ourselves, [U.S. government] should not be actively advocating with the government of Italy without the company going through the [Commerce Department] Advocacy Center.”
Hunter Biden sat on the board of Burisma for nearly five years and earned more than $2 million from the energy firm during that time, according to court records filed as part of his tax case in California.
This latest revelation builds on recent allegations that Hunter Biden attempted to leverage his proximity to power for business gains.
Last week, prosecutors contended in court filings that the younger Biden accepted payments from a Romanian businessman who wanted him to “influence U.S. government agencies” while his father was vice president.
Lawyers for Hunter Biden criticized the allegations related to the Romanian businessman in court filings.
“The Special Counsel’s unnecessary change of tactic merely echoes the baseless and false allegations of foreign wrongdoing which have been touted by House Republicans to use Mr. Biden’s proper business activities in Romania and elsewhere to attack him and his father,” attorneys for Hunter Biden wrote.
In related news, Hunter Biden first addressed his role at Burisma in an interview with ABC News in Oct. 2019. He acknowledged at the time that he would “probably not” have been offered the role at Burisma if his last name hadn’t been Biden, but insisted he “did nothing wrong at all” by accepting overseas work while his father was vice president.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(PHILADELPHIA) — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump debated for the first time on Tuesday, a consequential matchup with just eight weeks until Election Day.
The debate was hosted by ABC News at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. The 90-minute showdown was filled with animated zingers and tense exchanges on key policy issues facing the American people.
Harris sought to portray herself as a new generation of leadership with a track record of results, while Trump tried to paint her as a radical Democrat and continued to criticize the Biden administration.
Here are some key takeaways from the debate:
Harris put Trump on defensive early on
The vice president didn’t waste any time in going on the attack against Trump.
“What we have done and what I intend to do is build on what we know are the aspirations and the hopes of the American people,” Harris said minutes into the debate. “But I’m going to tell you all, in this debate tonight, you’re going to hear from the same old, tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling.”
She later took a dig at his rallies, claiming people leave them early out of “exhaustion” as he gives long speeches that sometimes include references to windmills causing cancer or to fictional characters such as Hannibal Lecter. Trump immediately defended his events and crowd sizes, saying he has the “biggest” and “most incredible” rallies in political history.
After Trump railed against crime in the nation, Harris said she thought the comments were “so rich” coming from someone who has been criminally charged multiple times. Trump has denied all wrongdoing in each of the cases against him.
Trump continues attacks on — Biden
Trump, who had a difficult time changing his message when Harris succeeded President Joe Biden as the Democratic Party’s nominee, continued to criticize Biden and continually tried to tie Harris to Biden’s record — most notably on the economy, immigration and leadership abroad.
“She is Biden,” he said. “The worst inflation we’ve ever had, a horrible economy because inflation has made it so bad, and she can’t get away with that.”
Harris, who has supported many of Biden’s stances while also offering her own economic proposals, quickly responded, “Clearly, I am not Joe Biden, and I am certainly not Donald Trump. And what I do offer is a new generation of leadership for our country.”
In the “spin room” with reporters after the debate, Trump continued to blast the Biden-Harris record.
“She’s trying to get herself away from Biden, and she wasn’t able to do that tonight,” he said.
Did Harris succeed in introducing herself to viewers?
A key question heading into the debate was whether Harris would be able to define herself to voters who say they don’t feel they know her or what she stands for well enough.
A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found a sizable share of likely voters (28%) and registered voters (31%) feel they need to know more about Harris as a candidate. Those numbers were even higher among independent voters: 41% of registered independents and 38% of likely voters who identified as independent said they needed to learn more about her.
Harris began her first response to a question on the economy by saying she was raised by her mother in a middle-class family. Later, she highlighted her background as a prosecutor who has taken on transnational criminal organizations. She also noted that as a senator, she was at the U.S. Capitol when it was attacked by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6.
She also hit on some of her signature policy proposals, including her support for reproductive freedom and economic plans like expanding the Child Tax Credit and assisting first-time homebuyers. She also noted that both she and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, are gun owners and wouldn’t take people’s guns away.
While neither candidate went too deep into policy specifics, Harris did try to paint a clear contrast between what she is offering and what she believes Trump is proposing if elected.
“What I do offer is a new generation of leadership for our country, one who believes in what is possible, one who brings a sense of optimism about what we can do instead of always disparaging the American people,” she said.
Meanwhile, Trump argued Harris is a “radical left liberal” and pressed her on some of her shifts on police funding, fracking and more since her 2019 Democratic primary campaign.
Trump still refuses to concede he lost the 2020 election
Trump tried to explain his own remarks recently in which he appeared to accept he lost the 2020 election, including his comment last week that he “lost by a whisker.”
“I said that?” Trump said on the debate stage when it was read back to him.
“Are you now acknowledging that you lost in 2020?” ABC News moderator David Muir asked.
“No, I don’t acknowledge that at all,” he said. “That was said sarcastically.”
Asked about the peaceful transfer of power, Trump did not say that he regrets anything about his actions on Jan. 6, 2021. He claimed he had “nothing” to do with what happened that day, which culminated in an attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Race comes up, but not gender
For the second time, Trump is campaigning against a woman for president. Harris’ gender was not broached during the debate, though her race was.
Asked by moderators about his previous false comments on her racial identity — including that Harris, who is Black and South Asian, “happened to turn Black” — Trump said he “couldn’t care less.”
“I don’t care what she is. I don’t care,” he said. “Whatever she wants to be is OK with me.”
When pressed, Trump doubled down, saying he read that she was not Black, and then that she was.
“And that’s okay. Either one was okay with me. That’s up to her. That’s up to her,” he said.
Asked for her thoughts, Harris went on the attack — but didn’t focus on herself. Instead, she focused on Trump’s falsehoods about former President Barack Obama’s birthplace and noted “he was investigated because he refused to rent property to Black families” to cast him as divisive and unfit.
“Honestly, I think it’s a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president who has consistently, over the course of his career, attempted to use race to divide the American people,” she said. “I think the American people want better than that, want better than this.”
“This is the most divisive presidency in the history of our country,” Trump responded.