In 1st solo rally, Vance lashes out at Democrats for Biden stepping down, getting behind Harris
(MIDDLETOWN, Ohio) — Speaking at his first solo rally in his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, former President Donald Trump’s running mate Sen. JD Vance attacked the Democratic Party over President Joe Biden stepping down as the party’s nominee and getting behind Vice President Kamala Harris.
“If you want to run for president, you’ve got to make your case to voters. You make your case to voters,” Vance said.
“[Trump] faced some good competition, and he made his case to voters,” Vance later said.
Vance’s rally came one week after he was announced as former President Donald Trump’s running mate for the 2024 presidential election.
On Monday, Vance took center stage in his hometown, which has played a crucial role in his upbringing and was the catalyst for much of what has happened to him, including being the backdrop of his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” in which he shared his story of growing up in poverty in America’s Rust Belt and being surrounded by violence and addiction.
The Ohio senator made his first official appearance at a campaign rally on Saturday in Grand Rapids, Michigan, alongside Trump. During that appearance, Vance wasted no time attacking Harris, who only one day later would receive an endorsement from Biden and other Democrats to top the Democratic ticket.
During the rally, Vance claimed “elite Democrats got in a smoke-filled room and decided to throw Joe Biden overboard.” Biden left the race amid mounting calls from fellow Democrats to do so since his poor debate performance last month.
“This is not OK, ladies and gentlemen. You cannot, for three-and-a-half years, take a guy who clearly didn’t have the mental capacity to do the job,” Vance said.
Vance then turned to Harris and Senate Democrats, repeating a claim Trump has made that she was complicit in hiding Biden’s mental fitness.
“Kamala Harris lied about it. My Senate Democratic colleagues lied about it. The media lied about it,” Vance said, adding it was an “insult to voters.”
During his remarks, he said the Trump-Vance ticket would fight for different groups of people including workers, parents and grandmothers.
“What President Trump and I want to do — we want to a drill, baby drill,” Vance said. “We’re gonna shut down that border, we’re gonna put American citizens first, because that’s what American citizens are gonna elect us to do. It’s common sense.”
(WASHINGTON) — Libertarian Party nominee for president Chase Oliver condemned a reportedly now-deleted comment from the New Hampshire Libertarian Party on X that appeared to encourage violence against Vice President Kamala Harris.
Oliver called the NHLP’s post “abhorrent” in his statement shared on X Sunday.
“I 100% condemn the statement from LPNH regarding Kamala Harris. It is abhorrent and should never have been posted,” Oliver wrote.
A New Hampshire reporter shared a screenshot of the since-deleted NHLP post, which reportedly read, “Anyone who murders Kamala Harris would be an American hero.”
The NHLP addressed removing an earlier X post on Sunday, writing, “We deleted a tweet because we don’t want to break the terms of this website we agreed to. It’s a shame that even on a “free speech” website that libertarians cannot speak freely. Libertarians are truly the most oppressed minority.”
Oliver went on to say in his statement that his party is committed to “non-aggression.” Chase Oliver, 2024 Libertarian presidential candidate, speaks at the Des Moines Register political soa…
“As Libertarians, we condemn the use of force, whether committed by governments, individuals, or other political entities,” he continued. “We are dedicated to the principle of non-aggression and to peaceful solutions to conflict. This is also something we pledge as part of attaining party membership.”
Following the posting of his statement, the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire responded with a homophobic slur in a series of posts, accusing Oliver of being an “infiltrating leftist snake.”
The LPNH has not responded to ABC News’ request for comment.
(CHICAGO) — When President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race, Edgar Diaz said his first thought was one of relief.
“Biden did great when he was [Barack] Obama’s running mate and then as he became president, he did a great job,” Diaz, a 43-year-old moderate Democrat who lives in Chicago, told ABC News. “But now I think he’s realized that, ‘Hey, you know what? Now it’s time to step aside and let somebody like Kamala Harris step in.'”
He wasn’t alone in that sentiment.
Four Illinois voters sat down with ABC News at the start of the Democratic National Convention to discuss Biden’s bombshell decision, the rise of Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s nominee and her possible historic path to the presidency.
On Biden’s exit from the campaign
Valerie Jencks and Grace Walters, who also plan to support Harris in November, described feeling uplifted and reassured when Biden said he wouldn’t seek a second term in the White House.
Jencks, 61, recalled watching Biden as a senator during the Reagan administration discuss apartheid and how “vibrant he was and how passionate he was about about these issues.”
“Over the years, he has stayed true to the issues and values,” she said. “But I feel that the passion that’s required to bring us together again just wasn’t there. So I was very relieved, actually, when he bowed out.”
Walters, 25, said she immediately saw more energy and enthusiasm behind Harris and her agenda.
“That was encouraging to see,” she said. “It became less about vote for us because we’re not them, and more vote for us because we’re doing X, Y and Z — and that is always an easier thing to get behind.”
David Spada, a 53-year-old conservative Republican, asked those at the table whether they had any concern with how Harris came to be the nominee. Much of the Democratic Party quickly coalesced around her after Biden quickly endorsed her to take his place, and no challenger to her candidacy emerged.
“But don’t you have a problem with the party picking Kamala, where, again, the Democratic voters didn’t pick the candidate,” Spada asked. “Shouldn’t the voters pick who the candidate is for president, not just the party?”
On Harris’ rise to the nomination
Before she became Biden’s vice president, Harris unsuccessfully ran for the party’s nomination in the 2020 Democratic primary. She exited the field before the first votes were cast in the Iowa caucus.
This time, however, she’s managed a positive campaign rollout that has her polling better against former President Donald Trump than Biden did.
“I think Kamala is resonating with the voters this time around much, much better because we’re familiar with her work,” said Jencks. “And I also believe that she has hit her stride in being able to publicly present herself and her thoughts and her ideas.”
Walters said she believed Harris’ background as an attorney general may have been too much of a focus in 2020, when protests against racism and police brutality were central to the political landscape.
“I think there’s been enough distance since her work as a prosecutor that people aren’t really talking about it as much,” she said. “There’s less ‘Kamala is a cop’ discourse on Twitter or whatever. I do still think some of that is maybe salient to look at with regards to her political record, but she definitely seems like the younger, more appealing pick, as opposed to Biden.”
Diaz, though, said he thought her prosecutorial skills were being portrayed in a different light to present Harris as an overall “fighter.”
“She is not afraid to go against big corporations, and sit down at the table with them and try to negotiate something,” he said. “I think that brings a lot of joy to a lot of our folks and a lot of passion. And I think that’s why she’s surging, she resonates with a lot of us.”
On Harris’ historic candidacy
While Harris could make history as the first woman elected president, voters said it wasn’t at the center of their support and they’re glad to see it’s not a focal point for the Harris campaign either.
“I think it’s cool that it hasn’t been a major thing of note,” said Walters. “That she’s the first is kind of exciting, but that it’s more about her policy than it is about her gender is even more exciting to me.”
Diaz said he was glad his daughter, who is 13, is seeing Harris and other women already serving in positions of power.
“At least it shows gender is not going to be an issue, it’s who’s the best person to lead this nation,” he said.
Spada, the lone Republican at the table, agreed.
“I just want the best candidate, man or woman,” he said.
“If she’s Black, she’s Indian, she’s a woman — it doesn’t matter. You just got to look at her policies, just like I would look at Nikki Haley’s policies if she was running, like you got to look at Trump’s policies as he’s running again,” Spada said.
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris is set to release her economic agenda on Friday following calls for her campaign to zero in on policy after an unprecedented rise to the top of Democratic ticket.
Harris is set to outline her plans at an event in Raleigh, North Carolina — a pivotal battleground state both Harris and former President Donald Trump will work to win in November.
Among the economic policies Harris is set to announce is a plan to provide up to $25,000 in down-payment support for first-time homeowners, according to a campaign official.
The campaign is vowing that during her first term, the Harris-Walz administration would provide working families who have paid their rent on time for two years and are buying their first home up to $25,000 in down-payment assistance, with more generous support for first-generation homeowners.
She will also call for the construction of 3 million new housing units to end the housing supply shortage, her campaign said.
Harris also will propose a federal ban on “corporate price gouging” on food and groceries, the campaign said.
“In her first 100 days, Vice President Harris will work to enact a plan to bring down Americans’ grocery costs and keep inflation in check,” the campaign said.
Overall, her plans are being sold as a way to bring down everyday costs for Americans.
Harris will work to raise the minimum wage and end taxes on tips, her campaign said.
Her plan includes proposals to protect and strengthen Social Security and Medicare by building on Biden-era proposals such as lowering drug costs by capping the cost of insulin at $35 and out-of-pocket expenses for prescription drugs at $2,000 for everyone, not just seniors.
Harris will call for restoring the American Rescue Plan’s expanded Child Tax Credit and she will propose a new $6,000 Child Tax Credit for “families with children in the first year of life.”
Harris’ announcement comes on the heels of her first joint appearance with President Joe Biden since he stepped down as the Democratic Party’s nominee. Questions are mounting on whether or not she will choose to either distance herself or embrace the current administration’s “Bidenomics.”
For her part, Harris has maintained an interest in expanding popular Biden-era proposals such as the child tax credit and has shown staunch support of labor unions. Under the current administration, she has taken on reducing medical and student debt.
Harris’ economic plan will provide a split screen with Trump, who touched on his economic priorities in remarks on Wednesday. He has already criticized Harris for “copying” some of his own proposals after she announced eliminating taxes on tips in Las Vegas on Saturday, the same city he first mentioned it.
“She’s doing a plan, you know she’s going to announce it this week, maybe. She’s waiting for me to announce it so she can copy it,” said Trump while outlining his own broad policy ideas in Asheville, North Carolina on Wednesday. “Like, remember a couple days ago, and ‘we will have no tax on tips!’ I said, ‘that was my plan!”
Harris will also direct her administration to crack down on mergers and acquisitions between big food corporations, another way for the campaign to continue to highlight her role as a prosecutor.
The vice president has already distanced herself from some of her former positions laid out in her 2020 presidential bid. Her campaign has remained ambiguous over her support of banning fracking and Medicare for All, which she had previously espoused.