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Saying that Trump treated front-line health personnel as ‘sacrificial workers’, Kamala Harris, pointing to the statements of the President of the United States himself, Donald Trump, to journalist Bob Woodward, accused the White House of not acting quickly to despite knowing the risks of COVID-19.
Vice President Mike Pence and Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris speak during the vice presidential debate on October 7, 2020, at Kingsbury Hall on the campus of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Image: AFP.
SALT LAKE CITY – Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Wednesday called Donald Trump’s response to COVID-19 a historic failure that disqualified him for a second term, in a scathing but mostly civil debate with Mike Pence, who tried to present it as extreme.
With Trump’s hospitalization over the weekend for COVID-19 giving a new importance to the role of the vice president, Pence and Harris spoke separately by plexiglass as a security measure 27 days before the election.
Harris, who would be the highest-ranking woman in U.S. history if she entered the White House with President Joe Biden, wasted no time attacking Trump’s record on COVID-19, which has killed more than 210,000 people. in the United States, more than in any other country.
“The American people have witnessed the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country,” said Harris, a US senator from California and a former prosecutor.
“And frankly, this administration has lost its right to re-election based on this,” Harris said in the 90-minute debate at the University of Utah.
Saying that Trump treated front-line health workers as “sacrificial workers,” Harris, pointing to Trump’s own statements to journalist Bob Woodward, accused the White House of failing to act quickly despite knowing the risks of COVID- 19.
“The president said it was a hoax. They downplayed the seriousness,” Harris said.
WITHOUT NAMES
After a raucous debate eight days ago between Trump and Biden, Pence and Harris took a more civilized tone, without insults, but deeply disagreed on the reaction to the pandemic.
“I want the American people to know, from day one, that President Donald Trump has put America’s health first,” Pence said, pointing to his travel ban from China on January 31, a month after he the first cases appeared in Wuhan. .
Referring to a controversy that sank Biden’s first presidential campaign in 1988, Pence said the Democrats’ COVID plan sounds “a bit like plagiarism, which is something Joe Biden knows a little about.”
In contrast to Trump’s fire hose blasts against Biden and his family, Pence displayed calm and stability and congratulated Harris on the historic nature of his candidacy.
Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, would also be the first African-American and Asian-American vice president.
But Pence tried to portray her as radical, saying that Harris, generally considered close to the Democratic establishment, was further to the left than the socialist candidate Bernie Sanders.
“More taxes, more regulation, a ban on fracking, abolition of fossil fuels, crushing American energy, economic surrender to China is a recipe for American decline,” Pence said, reciting a list that Biden probably wouldn’t describe as his platform.
Pence, questioned by USA Today moderator Susan Page, acknowledged that “the climate is changing,” but insisted that market solutions were the best way to reduce carbon emissions.
Even if they delved deeper into the background, the two candidates revealed little news about their policies and were notably elusive on hot topics like abortion rights.
In a lighter moment that was without comment onstage but sparked a flurry of social media posts, Pence spoke with a fly visibly in her hair.
‘GREAT INSULT’
The two candidates had one of their most intense clashes over racial justice after nationwide protests over police treatment of African Americans.
Biden “believes that law enforcement has an implicit bias against minorities,” Pence said.
“It is a great insult to the men and women who serve in law enforcement. And I want everyone to know who wears the law enforcement uniform every day, President Trump and I are with you,” he said.
Pence, criticizing the media coverage, insisted that Trump condemned white supremacy despite what some viewers interpreted in the president’s shout at the far-right group Proud Boys in their debate last week.
Harris pointed to a number of previous statements by Trump, including his notorious statements that “great people” were at a 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which turned violent.
“I will not sit here and be lectured by the vice president on what it means to enforce the laws of our country,” Harris said.
“I am the only one on this stage who has personally prosecuted everything from child sexual assault to homicide.”
Two more presidential debates are scheduled, but now they are up in the air with Trump’s diagnosis.
Biden, 77, has said he wouldn’t like to debate whether Trump, 74, is still sick with the virus.
But Trump, always the hyperbolic showman, said in a video Wednesday that he felt “perfect.”
“I think it was a blessing from God that I caught him,” he said.
Trump appeared to be watching the vice presidential debate avidly, tweeting without using Harris’s name that “she’s a gaffe machine.”
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