Vice President Kamala Harris condemned former President Donald J. Trump as a leader who “incites hate” during an address on Saturday at a convention of Asian American voters in Philadelphia.
“Someone who vilifies immigrants, who promotes xenophobia, who stokes hate and who incites fear should never again have the chance to stand behind a microphone,” Ms. Harris said. “And never again have the chance to stand behind the seal of the president of the United States of America.”
During the pandemic, Mr. Trump often referred to Covid-19 as the “China virus” or the “Kung Flu,” angering Asian Americans who said he was being racist.
The Biden campaign has been battling to turn the nation’s attention back toward Mr. Trump after the president’s poor debate performance caused panic among some Democrats who worry he is too old to win re-election. Polls show that a majority of Democratic voters now want Mr. Biden to drop out of the race.
Ms. Harris tried to move beyond those concerns, keeping her focus on Mr. Trump and his record on abortion, the threat she said he posed to American democracy and his efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
“Ultimately, in this election, we each face a question: What kind of country do we want to live in?” she said, presenting the choice voters face as between “a country of freedom, compassion and rule of law, or a country of chaos, fear and hate.”
Ms. Harris was speaking at a forum hosted by APIAVote, a nonpartisan, voter-education group for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Mr. Biden’s team has prioritized efforts to reach his loyal base of voters since the debate, which includes many African American and Hispanic people.
Asian American voters were also an important part of the coalition that put Mr. Biden in office in 2020, and on Tuesday, the vice president — who is of Indian and Jamaican heritage — helped kick off the campaign’s organizing effort aimed at them during a speech in Las Vegas.
Asian American voters are an influential swing group, especially in the battleground state of Nevada, and they turn out at high rates. In 2020, nearly 60 percent of them nationwide — roughly 7.6 million people — cast ballots, according to the 2024 Asian American Voter Survey. They mobilized heavily for Mr. Biden in that election.
But since then some have shifted to the right. The survey found that Mr. Biden was still up with the group by a sizable margin but that he had lost ground compared with 2020, as he has with many demographics.
Christine Chen, the executive director of APIAVote, said the Trump campaign had also been invited to participate in the event.
Ms. Harris was interrupted early in her speech by small groups of protesters who were shouting, “Free, free Palestine.” The crowd tried to drown them out with chants of “Four more years,” as they did at Mr. Biden’s rally in Detroit on Friday. Security quickly removed the protesters from the Philadelphia Convention Center, where the forum was held.
The interruption was a reminder of the divide that the war in Gaza has caused in the Democratic base, even as that issue has been overshadowed in recent days by concerns about Mr. Biden’s age.
After her speech, Ms. Harris ventured to the Reading Terminal Market, a Philadelphia landmark, to pick up lunch at a Thai food stand. She briefly spoke with reporters there, saying that Mr. Biden did an “outstanding job” at his solo news conference on Thursday and praising his appearance in Detroit.
“He is a master of the issues,” said Ms. Harris, who added: “He’s turning out big crowds. There’s a lot of enthusiasm. There’s a lot of support.”
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