Race between Harris, Trump enters new phase with Biden exit

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump entered a new phase of the presidential race on the morning after an Oval Office speech in which President Biden formally bowed out — each taking new aim at the other as they sprint toward November.

During a Thursday morning conversation on the Republican-friendly “Fox and Friends,” Trump called Harris a worse candidate than Biden and a “San Francisco radical” who would take the country to a new low if elected.

“She’s the most radical person probably that we’ve had in office,” Trump said, “let alone the office of the presidency.”

Harris, in a speech before the American Federation of Teachers in Houston, cast the choice before voters as one between moving backward or forward and Trump’s agenda as a dangerous one — including for unionized workers like those before her.

“We are fighting for the future,” she said. “In our vision of the future, we see a place where every person has the opportunity not just to get by, but to get ahead.”

Harris also released her first campaign ad, which featured a similarly forward-looking tone — and got a boost from Beyoncé, who gave permission to the Harris campaign to use her song “Freedom,” according to CNN.

“In this election we each face a question: What kind of country do we want to live in?” Harris says at the start of the ad.

“There are some people who think we should be a country of chaos, of fear, of hate,” she says, over an image of Trump. “But us? We choose something different. We choose freedom.”

The two candidates’ remarks Thursday expanded on themes they had been striking in recent days, as Harris made quick work of shoring up support to officially become the Democrats’ candidate for president. The latest New York Times/Siena College poll, released Thursday, showed Harris in a virtual tie with Trump — with 70% of Democratic voters saying they wanted the party to quickly consolidate behind her and avoid a fight for the nomination.

But Harris and Trump also aimed to punch back at new lines of attack from the opposing camp — as well as old ones resurfacing from the past. Across the country, surrogates and supporters for each candidate tried to do the same.

In one resurfaced video, Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, of Ohio, called Harris and other Democratic leaders “childless cat ladies” who “don’t really have a direct stake” in the future of the country because they don’t have children.

Women across the internet responded angrily. Kerstin Emhoff, the ex-wife of Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, defended Harris as well, pointing out that Harris has been a co-parent to her and the second gentleman’s two children.

“These are baseless attacks. For over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and I,” Kerstin Emhoff said. “She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.”

The tone Thursday was one more commonly felt in much earlier days of a presidential contest, but such is the impact of the seismic shift in the race caused by Biden’s late exit.

The Times/Siena poll showed Trump leading Harris 48% to 47% among likely voters in a head-to-head matchup. That’s a significant improvement from where Biden stood — 6 percentage points behind Trump — in the same poll in early July.

Trump and his campaign were recalibrating their message to better and more specifically take shots at Harris. Harris and her campaign were seeing a flood of fresh enthusiasm and trying to take advantage of it. Both campaigns were trying out new ideas to see what might best stick, what would resonate with their bases, what would draw rally cheers and social media likes and engagement.

On “Fox and Friends,” Trump ridiculed Biden’s Wednesday evening speech as “terrible,” and said the president “looked like he was having problems.”

Though some Republican leaders have said the 81-year-old Biden should resign because he’s unable to fulfill his duties, Trump said he didn’t believe Biden should be removed from office, as there is “not long to go” before the election, and because “if he goes, she then takes over, and she’s worse than he is.”

In recent days, Harris and her backers have touted her experience as a prosecutor — a former San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general. Trump on Thursday suggested, without evidence, that Harris somehow had a hand in the various criminal cases against him.

“They’ve weaponized the justice system against me,” Trump said. “They push all these cases on me, they’re the ones that start it, and then they say, ‘I’m a prosecutor, he’s a criminal.’ They’re the ones, every case is started by them.”

Trump has been charged with multiple crimes for allegedly taking classified documents home with him after leaving the White House and then trying to cover it up, and encouraging his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Those cases were spearheaded by a special counsel.

Separately, he was criminally convicted of 34 felonies — in a case brought by New York prosecutors — for falsifying business records to hide paying hush money to an adult film actor alleging she’d had an affair with him, which he has denied. He faces separate charges of trying to subvert the election in Georgia, which were filed by prosecutors there.

Harris, in contrast, began her speech before the teachers union by praising Biden’s speech and his work for the country. Saying “I revere this office, but I love my country more,” Biden said he was passing the torch to another generation of leaders to defeat Trump.

“He showed once again what true leadership looks like,” she said. “He really did. His words were poignant.”

She also tried to include major policy goals that she would take up and continue from the current administration — such as affordable healthcare, forgiving student loans, passing gun control measures and backing unionized labor.

“We are in a fight for our most fundamental freedoms,” Harris said. “And to this room of leaders I say: Bring it on.”

Both candidates also commented on protesters who on Wednesday set ablaze an American flag at Union Station in Washington in protest of a speech before Congress by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose country’s war against Hamas has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and leveled much of Gaza.

Again, their messages diverged.

In a statement, Harris described “despicable acts by unpatriotic protesters and dangerous hate-fueled rhetoric,” and condemned the burning of the flag.

“That flag is a symbol of our highest ideals as a nation and represents the promise of America. It should never be desecrated in that way,” Harris said. “I support the right to peacefully protest, but let’s be clear: Antisemitism, hate and violence of any kind have no place in our nation.”

Trump said anyone who does “anything to desecrate” an American flag should be thrown in jail for a year.

“Now people will say, ‘Oh, it’s unconstitutional.’ Those are stupid people,” he said.

He suggested that, on such issues, the U.S. could learn from strongman leaders in other countries.

“All over the world — Putin and President Xi of China — all over the world they’re watching this. Kim Jong Un, he looks at us like we’re a bunch of babies,” Trump said. “That wouldn’t happen in their countries. It’s impossible for that to happen in their country.”