Vice President Kamala Harris challenged former President Donald Trump on Sunday for refusing to do what she has done in recent days: release a report on his health, sit for a “60 Minutes” interview and commit to another presidential debate.
“It makes you wonder: Why does his staff want him to hide away?” Harris asked the crowd at a rally in a packed college basketball arena in Greenville, North Carolina. “One must question: Are they afraid that people will see that he is too weak and unstable to lead America?”
Her line of attack marked an attempt to turn the tables on Trump, who for months had suggested that President Joe Biden was too old to be president and accused him of hiding from the American people. And it underscored her efforts to present herself as the candidate of change and Trump as a relic of the past, as she forms a closing message in the final weeks of her campaign.
“From him, we are just hearing from that same, old tired playbook,” she said. “He has no plan for how he would address the needs of the American people. He is only focused on himself.”
Harris’ rally, which attracted about 7,000 people, was aimed especially at urging supporters in a presidential battleground state to cast their ballots before Election Day. Early voting begins Thursday in North Carolina. “The election is here,” she said.
It was also meant to mobilize Black voters, a crucial Democratic constituency whose support for Harris is drifting compared with 2020, polls have found. A survey of Black likely voters from The New York Times/Siena College found that roughly 8 in 10 Black voters plan to vote for Harris — an overwhelming majority but more than 10 points short of the support Biden had four years ago. The softening of support was especially pronounced among Black men — 70% of whom said they planned to support her.
Roughly 4 in 10 residents of Greenville are Black, and the city is surrounded by rural communities with significant Black populations that often say they are ignored by national campaigns. A Democratic presidential candidate has not won North Carolina since Barack Obama in 2008. A Times polling average shows Harris within 1 point of Trump in the state, which he almost certainly must win to reclaim the White House.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond Sunday to a request for comment about Harris’ remarks. Trump, speaking at a rally in Prescott Valley, Arizona, on Sunday, cast himself as an indefatigable campaigner, who can give multiple long speeches each day and keep up with the rigors of political travel.
“Who the hell can do this two, three times a day?” Trump said. “So I speak for hours, mostly without a Teleprompter.” And he mocked reporters for seizing on any mispronunciation of a word to claim “he’s cognitively impaired” or “he’s getting old.”
After avoiding the media during the initial rollout of her truncated campaign, the vice president has embarked on a blitz of interviews recently, both with mainstream journalists and on nontraditional settings like podcasts. She appeared on a “60 Minutes” special last Monday; CBS said that Trump had agreed to be interviewed on the program as well but then backed out.
Harris also released a letter from her doctor Saturday declaring that she was in “excellent health” and possessed the “physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.”
Harris’ allies say the final three weeks of the campaign will focus on engaging the Black voters who have not yet committed to casting ballots for her. Through town hall-style events, get-out-the-vote efforts geared toward Black men and the use of campaign surrogates, Democrats hope to consolidate their base of Black voters around the party once more.
They also plan to ramp up efforts to counter what they see as misinformation about Harris’ record on criminal justice, and they are holding events at historically Black colleges and universities to engage Black voters during their season of homecoming celebrations.
On Tuesday, Harris will sit for an interview in Detroit with Charlamagne Tha God, one of the nation’s most popular Black radio hosts, on his nationally syndicated show.
“The job of any great candidate in their campaign is to, number one, listen, and I think the Harris campaign has been listening and is addressing that concern pretty aggressively,” said Quentin James, co-founder and CEO of the Collective PAC, an organization that supports Black political candidates.
Harris’ weekend visit to North Carolina also included local outreach efforts as the state recovers from the devastation of Hurricane Helene last month. On Saturday, she helped put together care packages at a barbecue restaurant and met with local Black elected officials and faith leaders.
Then, before her rally Sunday, Harris attended a service at a predominantly Black church in Greenville as part of her campaign’s wider initiative to engage Black faith voters, which will include a “Souls to the Polls” initiative centered around churchgoers.
At the church, the vice president condemned efforts to spread misinformation about post-storm relief efforts. Trump and Republicans have amplified many false claims, although Harris did not name the former president in her remarks.
“Instead of offering hope, there are those who are channeling people’s tragedies and sorrows into grievances and hatred,” she said, arguing that their goal was “to play politics for other people’s heartbreak.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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