President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s selection of Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) as his vice presidential pick was “a dangerous choice.”
“A lot of people think it’s a dangerous choice,” Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Tuesday night. “I think she is the most liberal person, supposedly, in the Senate.”
At a White House news conference shortly after Biden revealed his decision, Trump suggested that Harris had been his “number one draft pick,” saying that she “did very, very poorly in the primaries.”
During a Fox Sports Radio interview hours before the announcement, the President began casting a familiar racist and misogynistic web around Biden’s looming decision, suggesting that his Democratic opponent had “roped himself into, you know, a certain group of people.” He then told host Clay Travis that some men may be “insulted” if Biden followed through on his commitment to select a woman.
Trump took those comments a step further when he suggested during the Tuesday press conference that Harris had been “disrespectful” to Biden during the Democratic presidential primary and went on to repeatedly hurl names at the lawmaker, calling her “nasty” several times over toward the end of the briefing.
But Trump’s suggestion that Harris is “dangerous,” aside from signaling at a racist trope often weaponized against Black people, may be relevant for a different reason. The former prosecutor, who is both a vigorous campaigner and skilled debater, may prove a dangerously formidable challenger to his own odds at winning a second-term.
Harris is expected to appear in Delaware and deliver remarks together with Biden on Wednesday afternoon.