Harris says, as a former prosecutor, 'I know Donald Trump's type'

Updated July 22, 2024 at 19:14 PM ET

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Vice President Harris vowed to reprise her role as a prosecutor on the campaign trail while running against former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee and a convicted felon.

In her first address to her campaign team — staffers who’ve spent months working to reelect President Biden and are now pivoting with roughly 100 days before the election — Harris said it’s her “intention to go out and earn this nomination and win.”

Harris, too, quickly pivoted to the kind of rhetoric she said to expect from her on the campaign trail — that of a seasoned attorney, who before she was elected as vice president and a United States senator from California served as that state’s elected attorney general and before that, a courtroom prosecutor.

“In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds. Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say: I know Donald Trump's type,” she said.

The speech in Wilmington, Del., followed a hectic 24 hour period in which Democratic lawmakers, organizers, and potential rivals rallied around Harris’ candidacy less than a day after Biden stepped out of the race and put his support behind her as the presidential nominee. She appears on a glide path to the nomination when delegates meet in Chicago next month.

Gov. Andy Beshear, D-Ky., seen as a potential contender, told MSNBC Monday morning that he was endorsing her candidacy. “The vice president is smart and strong which will make her a good president,” he said.

Fellow Democratic Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania also quickly endorsed Harris, eliminating speculation that they might try to challenge her at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in four weeks.

A flood of Democratic lawmakers in both the House and Senate have already rallied behind Harris, including former House Speaker and fellow Californian Nancy Pelosi, who appeared to have an active role in Biden's decision to back out of the race.

"In the Democratic Party, our diversity is our strength and our unity is our power," Pelosi wrote in a statement on X. "Now, we must unify and charge forward to resoundingly defeat Donald Trump and enthusiastically elect Kamala Harris as the next President of the United States.”

While some Democrats are advocating for an “open process” in Chicago, there seems to be little appetite for a contentious battle for the nomination to take on former President Donald Trump, and any potential challenge seemed likely to be nominal.

“A lot of people would like to see a mini-primary. That’s the process to find out if you have the strongest candidate, whether it be Kamala or someone else, to get behind,” longtime Democrat-turned-independent Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia told CBS on Monday.

However, Manchin, who is retiring, made clear he would not seek to challenge her. He did forecast problems with her candidacy in a general election.

“I mean, [the Democratic Party has] gone to the left. But let’s see if she comes back. You know a person can be in one position and make a change or direction change. And I would like to see that direction change," he said.

Show her the money

Democratic voters flooded Harris’s nascent campaign with donations, raising $50 million in less than a day, suggesting the money will not be one of her struggles in her campaign against Trump.

“These are not ordinary times. And this will not be an ordinary election,” Harris wrote in a solicitation text to supporters on Monday asking for $20 donations.

Harris is also likely to benefit from the $240 million the Biden campaign reported it had on hand in the most recent disclosure, but there is some dispute over whether campaign finance laws allow for Biden to just hand it all over to Harris’s campaign.

Sean Cooksey, the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Election Commission, told NPR’s Morning Edition there are legitimate arguments to be made that Harris isn’t entitled to those funds.

On Sunday, Cooksey shared on X a portion of federal campaign finance regulations, which states that if a candidate is “not a candidate in the general election,” all contributions made to that candidate for the November election “shall be either returned or refunded to the contributors or redesignated… or reattributed… as appropriate."

Cooksey would not answer how he, as FEC commissioner, interprets that regulation.

But he may have to consider his interpretation if the Trump campaign files a complaint with the FEC, or a request for an advisory opinion, on Biden’s efforts to hand over his campaign war chest to Harris.

Given the abbreviated timeline for those complaints to be heard — there are roughly 100 days until the presidential election — Democrats’ efforts to do could also be challenged in court.

GOP reworks campaign playbook

Biden’s exit from the race upends Trump’s campaign too. Republicans are well-versed in campaigning against Harris, but the elevation of the first multiracial woman will inject new elements of race and gender into a contest that previously was between two elderly white men.

“We’re ready, and we’ve been ready,” Trump spokesman Jason Miller said on X. “Kamala Harris will not be able to outrun the Harris-Biden record or her radical leftist record from the California days.”

Specifically, Republicans are already highlighting Harris’s more liberal immigration positions and will argue that she “covered up” for Biden’s mental acuity. “You lied about it every day,” senior Trump campaign official Chris LaCivita said on X.

How exactly voters respond to the Democratic shakeup remains to be seen. A recent NPR/PBS News/Marist poll, conducted before Biden withdrew from the race but after his poor debate performance, showed both Biden and Harris in a statistical tie with Trump.

Running mate needs a running mate

The biggest question for Democrats now may be who Harris will select as her vice president.

Speculation quickly fell to contenders in must-win swing states such as Shapiro, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, or Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina, where Harris has already traveled frequently in this campaign.

Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz. has won statewide races twice and could put back on the map a state that Democrats believe had largely slipped away from Biden by the time he exited the race.

With just four weeks until the convention, Democrats will have little time to vet a potential running mate and voters won’t have to wait long to find out: the running mate is historically announced in the days prior to the convention.

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