Harris lauds Biden’s ‘unmatched’ legacy in 1st public appearance since Biden left 2024 race
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday made her first public appearance since President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race and endorsed her.
Harris gave remarks at an event celebrating the NCAA championship teams Monday morning on the South Lawn of the White House. She is filling in for Biden, who is recovering from COVID.
“I wanted to say a few words about our president. Joe Biden’s legacy of accomplishment over the past three years is unmatched in modern history,” Harris said at the top of her statement. “In one term, he has already surpassed the legacy of most presidents who have served two terms in office.”
Harris didn’t specifically address her own candidacy, but said she was grateful for Biden’s service to the country.
“I am firsthand witness that every day our president, Joe Biden, fightsfor American people. And we are deeply, deeply grateful for his service to our nation,” she said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke multiple times in the span of a few days this month, multiple people familiar with the conversations told ABC News, including an in-person meeting in Milwaukee during the Republican National Convention where the two presidential candidates discussed ways Kennedy could be involved in a second Trump administration.
At least one idea floated, according to two people with knowledge of the talks, was for Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic who speaks often about the perils of chronic disease, to oversee the Health and Human Services Department under a possible Trump administration.
According to one source, the in-person meeting, which took place the Monday of the convention, never reached a point where Trump and Kennedy had a deal in place for Kennedy to exit the race and endorse the former president in exchange for a role in the administration. Rather, it was an “informal,” “free flowing” conversation, the source said.
The two men initially spoke by phone on the evening Trump survived an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally, one source told ABC News, adding that they agreed on that phone call to meet in Milwaukee the next week.
The Washington Post first reported the existence of the conversations.
Two people familiar with Kennedy’s thinking told ABC News that the agreement to meet with Trump stemmed from Kennedy’s desire for national unity.
According to one of the sources, Kennedy has tried to connect with Democratic leaders regularly for roughly a year to try to discuss ways to “bring the party back to its roots,” but has not succeeded in having those conversations.
Kennedy, who initially ran for the Democratic nomination last year, pivoted to an independent run in October.
“President Trump met with RFK and they had a conversation about the issues just as he does regularly with important figures in business and politics because they all recognize he will be the next President of the United States,” Trump spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez told ABC News in a statement.
A spokeswoman for Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment.
Nicole Shanahan, Kennedy’s running mate, told ABC News in a statement that she was aware of Kennedy’s dialogue with Trump this month, and was supportive.
“I was aware of it and support American Unity and health. We are willing to speak with anyone on unwinding the corporate capture of our agencies,” she said.
(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.
(WASHINGTON) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has officially withdrawn his petition to be on the Arizona ballot, the Arizona secretary of state’s office told ABC News Thursday night, marking the first tangible sign Kennedy plans to exit the presidential race.
“We have processed withdrawal forms for RFK prior to the ballot printing deadline,” Arizona secretary of state spokesperson JP Martin told ABC News. “No changes may be made to put the electors back on the ballot now.”
The ballot printing deadline for Arizona is 6 a.m. Friday, Martin said. That means if Kennedy’s campaign hadn’t filed withdrawal paperwork by then, Kennedy’s name would have been on the November ballot no matter what.
ABC News reported Wednesday that Kennedy plans to exit the race on Friday and endorse former President Donald Trump, according to sources.
A push from Trump’s team to secure an endorsement from Kennedy began in earnest about a week before the Republican National Convention, with a concerted effort, in particular, from Donald Trump Jr., Tucker Carlson and Omeed Malik, a donor to both Trump and Kennedy, sources told ABC News.
At the time, it was unclear to Trump’s team who Kennedy’s campaign hurt more: Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris. That changed when Harris became the Democratic nominee, and surveys showed that Kennedy would take more votes from Trump than from her.
As ABC News previously reported, Trump and Kennedy spoke by phone in the hours after the assassination attempt against Trump in Pennsylvania last month, then spoke in person in Milwaukee during the Republican National Convention.
Days after Kennedy’s son leaked a portion of the phone call, Kennedy interrupted a Zoom meeting with top supporters to take a call from Trump, according to two people in the meeting. When the call came in, he turned his iPhone to the screen to show the attendees who was calling.
Kennedy then stepped away for 10 minutes, and when he returned, he told attendees that Trump called to thank him for a message Kennedy had left him that day to apologize for the leak.
Though Kennedy still plans to exit the race on Friday and endorse Trump, some in his inner circle have concerns about such a move, multiple people familiar with the dynamics told ABC News.
Moreover, two people who know Kennedy described him as notoriously indecisive, though they had no indication the candidate planned to change his mind about his plans.
The Kennedy campaign lays blame for its current situation at the feet of Democrats, who have flooded the campaign with a deluge of lawsuits over ballot access.
Kennedy’s running mate Nicole Shanahan told ABC News that the lawsuits have drained the campaign of resources — money, time and energy — that it might have put toward campaigning and doing the work to win votes.
“We’re being prosecuted politically right now. This is not normal for democracy,” Shanahan said.
She also cited her and Kennedy’s desire for national unity and their motivation to advance the causes they care about, even if they can’t do so from the White House.
As for the conversations with Trump and his team, Shanahan said, “All we can do is gauge sincerity, and we’re gauging sincerity from Donald Trump.”