Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump relies on the support of billionaires and big companies while his campaign is powered by the people, Vice President Kamala Harris said while addressing her first election rally on Tuesday, a day after becoming the presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party.
“Donald Trump is dependent on the support of billionaires and big companies. He’s trading access in exchange for campaign donations. A few months ago, you all saw that, at Mar-a-Lago, he literally promised big oil companies, big oil lobbyists, that he would do their bidding for $1 billion in campaign donations,” Harris, 59, said in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
“On the other hand, we are running a people-powered campaign. We just got some breaking news. We just had the best 24 hours for grassroots fundraising in the history of a presidential campaign. Because we are a people-powered campaign, you know we will have a president who puts people first,” Harris said, addressing her first campaign rally less than 50 hours after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.
“This campaign is about two different visions for our country. One, where we focus on the future. The other, we focus on the past. We believe in a future where every person has an opportunity not just to get by, but to thrive,” he said to applause from the audience.
“A future where no child has to grow up in poverty, where every worker has the freedom to join a union, where every person has access to affordable health care, affordable childcare and paid family leave. We believe in a future where every senior can retire with dignity. So, all of this is to say that building the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency. Because the point is: We’re all here. When our middle class is strong, America is strong,” he said.
Harris alleged that Trump wants to take the country backwards.
“He and his radical Project 2025 agenda would undermine the middle class as we know it. We have to take this seriously. … Donald Trump intends to cut Social Security and Medicare. He intends to give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and make working families pay the bill,” Harris said.
“They want to repeal the Affordable Care Act and take us back to a time when insurance companies had the power to refuse coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. Remember what that was like? Kids with asthma, women with breast cancer, grandparents with diabetes. America has tried these failed economic policies before, but we’re not backing down…and I’ll tell you why we’re not,” she said.
“Because our fight is for the future. It’s a fight for freedom. Generations before us have led the fight for freedom. And now, Wisconsinites, the reins are in our hands. We, who believe in the sacred freedom to vote. We will make sure every American has the right to cast their vote and have it counted,” Harris said.
He said, “We, who believe every person in our country should have the freedom to be safe from the terror of gun violence, will finally pass red flag laws, universal background checks, and a ban on assault weapons. We, who believe in reproductive freedom, will stop Donald Trump’s extreme restrictions on abortion because we trust women to make their own decisions about their bodies and not have their government tell them what to do.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
