President Trump, in his first on-camera remarks about the new Biden-Harris ticket, said he was “a little surprised” that Joe Biden chose Kamala Harris to be his running mate given her “very poor” primary performance, but said she was his “number one pick” to face off against.
During a White House briefing Monday afternoon — shortly after Biden announced Harris as his VP nominee — Trump lashed out against the Democratic senator.
The president, referring to her failed 2016 presidential run, claimed he was most surprised by the pick because “she did very very poorly in primaries, she ended up right around two percent.” And he drew attention to her campaign attacks on Biden at the time.
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“She was very disrespectful to Joe Biden. It’s hard to pick someone that was that disrespectful,” Trump said referring to a debate moment to Harris’ blitz against Biden in last summer’s primary debates.
On the debate stage in Miami, Harris criticized comments by the former vice president spotlighting his ability to find common ground during the 1970s with segregationist senators with whom he disagreed, and over his opposition decades ago to federally mandated school busing.
“Do you agree today that you were wrong to oppose busing in America?” Harris – who is Black – asked Biden during the debate.
“There was a little girl in California who was a part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day,” she said. “And that little girl was me.”
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Also during the press conference, Trump was asked about Harris’ record overseeing 1,900 marijuana convictions in San Francisco when she later claimed to have smoked the substance herself, as reported by Mercury News.
“She is a person that’s told many many stories that were not true,” Trump replied, before pivoting to her positions on other policies. “She wants to raise taxes, slash funds to our military, she’s against fracking…she’s in favor of socialized medicine– she wants to take health care plans away from 180 million Americans.”