Deccan Chronicle

BIDEN’S V-P CHOICE SURPRISES TRUMP

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Washington, Aug. 12: US President Donald Trump said he is surprised that his Democratic Party challenger for the presidenti­al elections Joe Biden has named Indianorig­in Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate despite knowing how “nasty” and “disrespect­ful” she has been towards him.

Biden on Tuesday named Harris as his vice-presidenti­al running mate, making history by selecting the first woman of colour to compete on a major party’s presidenti­al ticket. Harris, 55, whose father is an African from Jamaica and mother an Indian, is currently the US Senator from California.

“We’ll see how she works out. She did very, very poorly in the primaries as you know. She was expected to do well. She ended up at right around two per cent,” Trump said. “She had a lot of things happening and so I was a little surprised that he (Biden) picked her. I’ve been watching her for a long time, and I was a little surprised,” Trump said, offering his first reaction to Biden’s pick of Harris. Harris had launched her presidenti­al campaign in January 2019. Her campaign could not take off and by the end of the year, she withdrew from the race. Harris is the first person of colour to be selected as a vice presidenti­al candidate and also only the fourth woman and first-ever African American and Indian American to be running for the second highest political position in the country.

Responding to questions, Trump told reporters that Harris has been nasty to Biden.

As far as Kamala is concerned, she’s a big tax raiser. She’s a big slasher of funds for our military. And she’s got a lot of difficult things that she’s going to have to explain. Plus she was very, very nasty — one of the reasons it surprised me — she was probably nastier than even Pocahontas (Senator Elizabeth Warren) to Joe Biden. She was very disrespect­ful to Joe Biden, Trump said, referring to the Democratic Party debates.

“It’s hard to pick somebody that’s disrespect­ful. When she said (those) things during the debates — the Democrat Primary debates — that were horrible about sleepy Joe. I would think that he wouldn’t have picked (her),” Trump said. Commenting on Vice President Mike Pence, Trump said he has been fantastic at his work.

“I will take him over Kamala and the horrible way she, again, treated Justice Brett Kavanaugh. That was a horrible event. I thought it was terrible of her, I thought it was terrible for our nation. I thought she was the meanest, the most horrible, most disrespect­ful of anybody in the US Senate, Trump said.

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