New York: As the presidential elections inch closer, the Democrats and the Republicans have begun a bitter tug of war, stepping up attacks on one another. After former US president Donald Trump sarcastically praised the Democrat for choosing vice president as an “insurance policy” against Joe Biden being replaced, Harris sharpened her attack on Trump.
According to new reports, she told a crowd of 20,000 in Dallas that Trump “had said he would terminate the Constitution in a second term”. “Trump has openly vowed if re-elected, he’ll be a dictator on day one, that he will weaponize the Department of Justice against his political enemies, round up peaceful protesters and throw them out of our country and even, and even and I quote, ‘terminate’ the United States Constitution,” Harris was quoted as saying in an NYT report.
She later posted on X: “Donald Trump wants to turn our democracy into a dictatorship”. Harris has emerged as a top replacement for Biden, which has left Trump worried as she is gaining popularity among the voters. Earlier, addressing supporters in Miami, Florida, Trump said Biden had made the “brilliant decision” to appoint Harris “as his running mate to avoid any challenge to his faltering candidacy,” an Al Jazeera report said.
Trump also challenged Biden to “redeem” himself after his stumbling debate performance last month. The Biden campaign said the president was too busy leading the country to respond to Trump’s “weird antics”. “We’d challenge Donald Trump to create jobs, but he lost three million. We’d challenge Donald Trump to stand up to Putin, but he bent the knee to him,” Biden campaign spokesman James Singer was quoted as saying.
Meanwhile, Biden called upon Democratic lawmakers "to end" the heated debate over his candidacy for re-election, triggered by his disastrous debate, saying in a letter to them that "I am firmly committed to staying in this race". His letter seeks to quell a revolt brewing among Democratic lawmakers. While Harris is a leading contender, President Biden is not going anywhere.
"Despite all the speculation in the press and elsewhere, I am firmly committed to staying in this race, to running this race to the end, and to beating Donald Trump," he wrote in the letter. "The question of how to move forward has been well-aired for over a week now. And it's time for it to end."
In a call to a morning talk show, Biden threw a challenge to those "party elites" who have been calling for his ouster to contest against him for the party nomination at the convention in Chicago. "I’m getting so frustrated by the elites, I’m not talking about you guys, but about the elite in the party, who... know so much more," Biden said, adding "challenge me at the convention".
Biden reminded lawmakers in the letter that he won the party nomination with 14 million votes, which was 87 per cent of the votes cast, and won nearly 3,000 party delegates (who will elect the nominee formally at the convention).
