Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday castigated remarks by her Republican rival, former President Donald J. Trump, who had claimed the night before that he would protect American women “whether the women like it or not,” casting his comments as further proof that a second term for him would be harmful to women.
Ms. Harris, speaking from Wisconsin before leaving for campaign stops in the West, said that Mr. Trump’s comments at a rally near Green Bay constituted a “very offensive” message to all Americans in the final days of the election.
Her appearance was designed to throw the focus of a race that has been divided along gender lines squarely back onto her rival, and to counter Mr. Trump’s attempts to tie her campaign to comments made by President Biden, who this week appeared to call the Republican nominee’s supporters “garbage.”
In the days since Mr. Trump headlined a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, where speakers spewed racist and sexist language, Ms. Harris and her advisers have been more aggressive about getting in front of the news cycle and turning attention back toward the former president.
So Ms. Harris spent seven minutes focusing on Mr. Trump’s track record with women and answering three questions before reporters in Madison, Wis., before a day of back-to-back rallies held across the Sun Belt.
“It actually is very offensive to women in terms of not understanding their agency, their authority, their right and their ability to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies,” she said. “This is just the latest on a series of reveals by the former president of how he thinks about women and their agency.”
In her remarks, Ms. Harris also warned that Mr. Trump would again try to eliminate the Affordable Care Act if given a second term. As president, he tried and failed to repeal the health care law, which has since become popular with a majority of Americans.
Ms. Harris nodded to remarks this week by Speaker Mike Johnson, an ally of Mr. Trump’s, in which he said Republicans would pursue “massive reform” of the law if the former president won. Mr. Johnson, the vice president said, would provide “further validation” of Mr. Trump’s efforts.
“Health care for all Americans is on the line in this election,” she said.
But Ms. Harris spent the bulk of her time highlighting Mr. Trump’s remarks about keeping women safe, an approach he cast as paternal. Women in the crowd at his rally screamed their approval, but Democrats roundly criticized the comments. Droves of them pointed to Mr. Trump’s happiness about overturning the constitutional right to abortion, as well as his history of misogynistic comments and behavior toward women.
In her remarks to reporters, Ms. Harris said the former president’s statement was “offensive to everybody, by the way.”
Mr. Trump’s remarks about protecting women — which he acknowledged onstage he was making despite warnings from his advisers that such comments could be damaging to his campaign — threatened to further upend his closing message to American voters. A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond when asked about Ms. Harris’s comments, though the former president addressed Ms. Harris on his social media site.
“Lyin’ Kamala is giving a News Conference now, saying that I want to end the Affordable Care Act,” Mr. Trump wrote. “I never mentioned doing that, never even thought about such a thing. She also said I want to end Social Security. Likewise, never mentioned it, or thought of it.”
As a candidate, Mr. Trump has expressed interest in replacing the Affordable Care Act and supporting cuts to entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicare. He also sought to repeal the Affordable Care Act during his tenure as president.
Heading into his Wisconsin rally, Mr. Trump had tried to seize on Mr. Biden’s comments apparently calling Trump supporters “garbage,” which he made after a comedian disparaged Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage” during the former president’s rally at Madison Square Garden. Mr. Trump held a stunt involving a garbage truck in Wisconsin and wore an orange garbage collector’s vest during his speech.
But by the time Mr. Trump left the rally, his critics, including Ms. Harris, had seized on his comments about women, sensing an opportunity to shift the pressure back onto him.
“Donald Trump thinks he should get to make decisions about what you do with your body,” Ms. Harris wrote on social media after Mr. Trump’s appearance. “Whether you like it or not.”
Ms. Harris had back-to-back rallies scheduled later Thursday in Phoenix; Reno, Nev.; and Las Vegas, where she is to appear with Jennifer Lopez, the Puerto Rican-American actor who is among a flood of Hispanic celebrities who signed on to help the Harris campaign in the days after Mr. Trump’s New York rally.
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