Trump attacks Kamala Harris 13 days after saying 'she'd be a fine choice'

The Trump campaign attacked Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) as “phony” on Tuesday, moments after she was tapped as Joe Biden’s 2020 running mate, and less than two weeks after Trump himself praised her as a potential vice presidential nominee.

Biden announced Harris as his running mate on Tuesday afternoon, calling her “a fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country’s finest public servants.”

The Trump campaign immediately pushed back.

“Clearly, Phony Kamala will abandon her own morals, as well as try to bury her record as a prosecutor, in order to appease the anti-police extremists controlling the Democratic Party,” Katrina Pierson, a campaign senior adviser, said in a statement.

The campaign also released a video ad painting Harris as a “phony” and claiming she had “rush[ed] to the radical left” in her own bid for president earlier this year. Trump retweeted the video onto his own personal account.

Trump’s thoughts on Harris were markedly different two weeks ago.

“I think she’d be a fine choice, Kamala Harris,” Trump said when asked about the California senator during a press availability on July 29. “She’d be a fine choice.”

Trump previously criticized Harris as a “failing presidential candidate,” tweeting in October last year that the unemployment numbers at that time were the best “EVER” and claiming it was “more than Kamala will EVER be able to do for African Americans!”

In January last year, by contrast, Trump suggested Harris was the “toughest” of the Democratic candidates, stating in an interview with the New York Times that the senator, whose name he pronounced as “Kameela,” had “the best opening [act] so far.”

“I would say, in terms of the opening act, I would say, would be her,” he said. “I think she probably, I just think she seemed to have a little better opening act than others. I think.”

Harris responded to her selection on Tuesday in a short statement from her Twitter account.

“Joe Biden can unify the American people because he’s spent his life fighting for us. And as president, he’ll build an America that lives up to our ideals,” she wrote. “I’m honored to join him as our party’s nominee for Vice President, and do what it takes to make him our Commander-in-Chief.”

Harris makes history as the first Black and South Asian woman to run on a major party’s presidential ticket.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.