Trump campaign blasts ‘phony’ Harris after Biden names her VP

President Trump and his campaign debuted their first ad targeting Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) just minutes after presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden named her as his running mate on Tuesday, dubbing the Democratic ticket “Slow Joe and Phony Kamala.”

The ad, a preview of the attacks likely to come from the Trump campaign, blasts Harris for her positions during her own presidential campaign, citing her support for “Medicare for All” and embrace of police reform.

“Voters rejected Harris. They smartly spotted a phony,” a narrator says in the ad, which Trump tweeted out. “But not Joe Biden. He’s not that smart. He’s called himself a transition candidate.”

pic.twitter.com/jXoffXyZed

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 11, 2020

Katrina Pierson, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, called Harris Biden’s “political living will” in a statement, casting her as a vessel for far-left ideas that will overtake the man atop the ticket.

“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 Democrat Party,” Pierson said.

The campaign doubled down on its criticism in a follow up press call, repeating claims Harris was a member of the far-left flank of the Democratic Party and that she was seeking to boost her own political career.

“What you’re seeing with the selection of Kamala Harris as his running mate, this has completed the leftist takeover of the party and of their radical agenda,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said on the call. “Kamala Harris will be the most liberal leftist nominee for VP that our country has ever seen.” 

The attempts to paint Harris as soft on crime and anti-police are at odds with criticism she has faced from some on the left over her time as a prosecutor and as California attorney general, and Biden has said he opposes calls from some activists to “defund the police.”

Still, the Trump campaign ad is reflective of broader efforts by the campaign to portray Biden as a hapless puppet of more progressive members of the Democratic Party.

“A hiding, diminished, and incoherent Joe Biden didn’t just select a vice-presidential candidate, he chose the person who would actually be in charge the next four years if he is somehow able to win,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement, calling Harris’s positions “well outside the mainstream for most Americans.”

Harris, in being named to the ticket, would become the first woman of color on a major party’s presidential ticket upon her nomination next week.

Biden touted Harris in a tweet as “a fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country’s finest public servants.” He also noted the personal friendship between her and his late son, Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015.

– Tal Axelrod contributed.