Trump surprised Biden chose 'nasty' Kamala Harris as VP pick: 'She essentially called him a racist'
President Donald Trump, on Tuesday, August 11, said he was surprised that his political rival Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris as his running mate. The Republican stated his surprise citing that the California senator had called the former vice president "essentially racist" during their primary debates. Trump, however, also revealed that Harris would have been his personal "number one pick" if he were given a choice over who he and Vice President Mike Pence would have wished to face off in the 2020 election.
Biden, on Tuesday afternoon, announced Harris as his running mate, making history by selecting the first Black woman to compete on a major party's presidential ticket. Although several Democrat leaders, including former President Barack Obama, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appreciated Biden's VP pick, Trump was not too happy with Biden's choice. The president, while appearing on Fox News, said: "She was one of the people that was projected to have a chance at winning. All she did as people got to know her, she went down. She finished at 2%, probably less than that and she fled. Remember how quickly. She said horrible things about Biden... She made terrible statements. She essentially called him a racist. And other things that were very bad."
Minutes after Biden's VP pick was announced, the Republican revealed that he was "a little surprised" considering Harris' "very poor" primary performance. "She did very very poorly in primaries, she ended up right around two percent," Trump said. "She was very disrespectful to Joe Biden. It's hard to pick someone that was that disrespectful."
"When she said things during the debates, during the Democratic primary debates that were horrible about Sleepy Joe, I would think you would not have picked her," the president continued. However, he added that Harris would have been his first pick for him to win a second term. "She was my number one draft pick. She was the one I thought would be the best for us."
Trump, at his news conference on Tuesday, also attacked the California senator, calling her "nasty" and "mean." The Republican, while referring to primary debates, said: "She was very nasty, – one of the reasons that surprised me, she was probably nastier than even Pocahontas to Joe Biden." The president uses "Pocahontas" as a slur for Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Trump, while talking to reporters at the White House, also called Harris "about the most liberal person in the US Senate." He said: "I would have thought that Biden would have tried to stay away from that a little bit." The president also brought up Harris' famous questioning of Brett Kavanaugh during his Senate confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court. A clip of Harris grilling Justice Kavanaugh in 2018 had gone viral on social media.
"I have been watching her for a long time and I was a little surprised. She was extraordinarily nasty to Judge Kavanaugh, now Justice Kavanaugh. She was nasty to a level that was just a horrible thing, the way she was, the way she treated now Justice Kavanaugh. And I won't forget that soon," Trump said. "I thought she was the meanest, the most horrible, most disrespectful of anybody in the U.S. Senate toward Kavanaugh, who faced accusations of rape during his confirmation hearing, which Kavanaugh denied."