Kamala Harris fired up her supporters at a campaign rally in Milwaukee Tuesday, prompting chants of “lock him up!” when she said she knows “Donald Trump’s type” from her days prosecuting “predators,” “fraudsters” and “cheaters.”
Harris, in her first appearance as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, vowed to defeat Trump in 105 days on Election Day. Touting her past career as the attorney general of California and a courtroom prosecutor, she said, “I took on perpetrators of all kinds—predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain”
“So hear me when I say: I know Donald Trump’s type,” she said, the crowd erupting into applause and cheers before breaking out into chants of “Lock him up! Lock him up! Lock him up!”
Harris smiled widely before calming the crowd enough to add: “I will proudly put my record against his any day of the week.”
Coming off a record-shattering 24 hours of fundraising after she announced she would be running to replace Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket to challenge Trump in November, the Harris campaign tore into Trump and J.D. Vance on Tuesday, landing a one-two punch on the duo over their positions—and personal involvement—regarding abortion, incest and sexual assault.
Harris’ knock-out blow? Trump, she said, is too old to be president again. The campaign also went after his 39-year-old running mate, who despised Trump in even younger days.
“Before he became Donald Trump’s apologist in chief, JD Vance said he believed his now-running mate sexually assaulted women,” Harris for President spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in a statement. “Now, Vance is enthusiastically running with someone he believed committed sexual violence so they can enact their cruel Project 2025 agenda together.”
It was only her first official day as the likely Democratic nominee, having shored up more than enough pledged delegates, but Harris did not enter the fray cautiously. She pummeled Vance over his past criticism of Trump as anything but a gentleman, railed against Trump World’s ultra-conservative Project 2025 plan and painted her top opponent as too old to be president again. (With President Joe Biden’s exit from the race, Trump, 78, is now the oldest presidential nominee in history.)
The campaign cited an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll conducted after the June 27 debate that found that 60 percent of voters believe Trump is too old to serve. (Even more voters thought Biden was too old.)
The Harris campaign went hard on Vance, highlighting what it called “bombshell reporting” by CNN that the Ohio senator repeatedly in 2016 suggested he believed Trump had committed sexual assault and even said one of the 2024 GOP nominee’s accusers was more credible than Trump.
CNN dug up an MSNBC segment from October 2016 on Trump’s alleged sexual misconduct against Jessica Leeds, a salesperson who had accused Trump of groping and forcibly kissing her on an airplane in the 1970s. Vance told MSNBC he wasn’t sure he could believe a serial liar.
“At a fundamental level, this is sort of a ‘he said, she said,’ right? And at the end of the day, do you believe Donald Trump, who always tells the truth? Just kidding,” Vance said. “Or do you believe that woman on that tape?”
According to CNN, following the infamous Access Hollywood “grab ‘em by the pussy” tape, Vance tweeted in October 2016, “What percentage of the American population has @realDonaldTrump sexually assaulted?”
Around that same time following Trump’s interview with Billy Bush, Vance reportedly deleted “likes” from his Twitter account, including one to which he had given a thumbs up that read: “Maybe the Central Park 5 could take out a full-page ad to condemn the coddling of thug real estate barons who commit serial sexual assault.”
Another post liked in 2016 by Vance said, “I wish there was a 2nd Vice Presidential debate just to see @GovPenceIN deny that Trump said he grabbed p*ssy.”
Trump’s new vice presidential running mate reversed his stance on Trump’s self-touted sexual aggression in 2023 as the GOP veepstakes contest heated up.
The nascent Harris campaign on Tuesday also highlighted Vance’s public comments opposing abortion for rape and incest victims, citing a 2021 interview he gave to Spectrum News in which he questioned how a child produced by rape is “somehow inconvenient or a problem.” The Democratic campaign also pointed to a Spectrum News interview in which Vance discussed his support for abortion bans without exceptions.
“As we heard Vice President Harris say yesterday, she’s spent her life taking on predators like Trump who abused women, fraudsters like Trump who ripped off consumers, and cheaters like Trump who broke the rules for their own gain,” Harris campaign spokesperson James Singer said.
The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment about the Harris campaign’s attacks on Vance’s past disapproval of Trump.
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