Massachusetts. US Vice President Kamala Harris used her first fundraising event since becoming the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to attack Republican candidate Donald Trump for being determined to roll back Americans’ freedoms.
Harris traveled Saturday to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where she is expected to raise more than $1.4 million, her campaign said, from an expected audience of about 800 people at the Colonial Theater. That would be more than $1 million above the original goal set for the event before President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.
The vice president told an enthusiastic crowd of supporters that she entered the race as an “underdog” but expressed confidence she could defeat Trump.
“I will fight to move our nation forward,” Harris said. “Donald Trump is trying to take our country backwards.”
Among those attending the fundraiser at the Colonial Theatre were musician James Taylor and many of the state’s Democratic heavyweights, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, former Gov. Deval Patrick and Rep. Richie Neal.
Harris received more than $100 million in donations in the first 48 hours after Biden dropped out of the race, a milestone for a presidential candidate, and her advisers said she has continued to raise money at a steady pace.
“This is a people-driven campaign,” Harris said. “And we have momentum.”
Harris, a former prosecutor in her home state of California, also mocked Trump for his legal troubles. She noted that he was recently convicted of 34 counts of fraud in New York, that a jury found the former president liable for sexually assaulting columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996, and that he was forced to pay $25 million to settle class-action lawsuits by those who attended the now-defunct Trump University real estate seminar.
“I’ve dealt with people like him my entire career,” Harris said. “So in this campaign, and I mean this in all seriousness, I will proudly compare my record to his any day.”
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– 2024-08-04 19:50:15
