WASHINGTON: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told CNN on Sunday that he thinks Vice President Kamala Harris will be easier to defeat in November’s election than Democratic President Joe Biden who stepped aside as his party’s candidate.
A CNN reporter said on X that Donald Trump made the comments to the network shortly after Biden announced his decision.
President Joe Biden announced on Sunday he was ending his campaign for reelection, while staying on as president for the remainder of his term. In a separate post on X, formerly Twitter, he endorsed Harris.
“My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made,” Biden wrote. “Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala Harris to be the nominee of our party this year.”
Joe Biden’s decision comes after weeks of pressure from Democratic lawmakers and donors who feared he lacked the mental and physical stamina to win and serve four more years.
The Democratic party will be taking a historic gamble if it now turns to Vice President Kamala Harris to become its presidential candidate, betting that a Black woman can overcome racism, sexism and her own missteps as a politician to defeat Republican Donald Trump.
In more than two centuries of democracy, American voters have elected only one Black president and never a woman, a record that makes even some Black voters wonder if Harris can crash through the hardest ceiling in US politics.
Who is Kamala Harris?
Harris, 59, is two decades younger than Trump and a leader in the party on abortion rights, an issue which resonates with younger voters and Democrats’ progressive base.
In 2021 she made history, becoming the first woman and first black and South Asian American to serve as US vice president.
The United States has never elected a woman president, and Harris has spent much of her time as vice president struggling to distinguish herself in a role that is by definition a supporting one.
Kamala Harris began work in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office and became the district attorney – the top prosecutor – for San Francisco in 2003, before being elected the first woman and the first black person to serve as California’s attorney general, the top lawyer and law enforcement official in America’s most populous state.
Born in Oakland, California, to two immigrant parents – an Indian-born mother and Jamaican-born father – her parents divorced when she was five and she was primarily raised by her Hindu single mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, a cancer researcher and civil rights activist.
She had her sights set on becoming the first woman US president when she competed against Biden and others for their party’s 2020 nomination. Harris dropped out of the race after a campaign hurt by her wavering views on healthcare.
Her biracial roots and upbringing help her engage with many American identities.
She grew up engaged with her Indian heritage, joining her mother on visits to India, but Harris has said that her mother adopted Oakland’s black culture, immersing Kamala and her younger sister Maya – within it.
“My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters,” she wrote in her autobiography The Truths We Hold. “She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as black girls and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud black women.”
