Vice President Kamala Harris expressed doubts about former President Donald Trump’s “fitness” to serve as president after the GOP nominee canceled several scheduled interviews and spent more than 30 minutes at the end of a Pennsylvania town hall, standing on the stage and swaying to the music , instead of a question.
Trump recently withdrew from interviews with NBC News and 60 Minutes. His staff had been in talks with The Shade Room, an online portal aimed mainly at juvenile and black audiences, but this did not happen apparently said Trump would not set an interview date because he was “exhausted.”
During a rally in Grand Rapids on Friday, Harris, 59, sharply criticized Trump, 78, for canceling interviews and questioned whether he would be able to serve another four years as president.
“If you’re exhausted during a campaign, there’s a real question about whether you’re cut out for the hardest job in the world,” Harris said.
The crowd in Grand Rapids cheered loudly when U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Lansing) asked if anyone had watched Harris’ Fox News interview. Harris spoke to a group of reporters before the rally and filmed a one-on-one interview after leaving the stage in Grand Rapids.
But Harris and other speakers warned of a “no holds barred” Trump if he successfully seeks a second term, citing Trump’s comment during an appearance on Fox News in which he called Democrats the “enemy within.”
“I always say we have two enemies,” Trump said. “We have an external enemy and then we have an internal enemy, and the internal enemy is, in my opinion, more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries.”
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Stabenow said that “Donald Trump is getting weirder, but you know what? It also becomes more and more terrifying.”
“To be clear, we know who the real domestic enemy is in America today, and that is Donald Trump,” Stabenow said.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who attended her “Blue wall bus tour” through Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, took aim at a recent report that Trump, in his first term, secretly sent a Covid-19 testing machine to Russian President Vladimir Putin early in the pandemic.
“During the pandemic, he told states like us, when we desperately needed medical supplies, that we had to find them ourselves. When we pleaded for life-saving supplies, he told us governors, “I’m not the nation’s shipping official,” Whitmer said. “But at the same time he was sending supplies to his buddy Vladimir Putin. He betrayed us. He violated his oath of office.”
Whitmer appeared on stage with Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Maryland Governor Wes Moore. U.S. Rep. Hillary Scholten, who is being challenged by GOP attorney Paul Hudson in the race for the 3rd Congressional District seat, also spoke at the event.
Harris said the stakes in November are higher than in the 2016 or 2020 elections, in which Trump also ran, citing J.final decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that, she said, she “essentially told the former president that he is effectively immune no matter what he does in the White House,” before encouraging the audience to “imagine Donald Trump without barriers.”
“Let us be clear: Anyone who suggests that we should dissolve the Constitution of the United States should never again have the privilege of standing behind the presidential seal,” Harris said, raising her voice.
This week was one of the busiest in Michigan during the entire presidential campaign.
Later Friday, Harris held events in Lansing and Oakland County. He is scheduled to arrive in Detroit on Saturday. On Friday evening, Trump met with supporters in Detroit.
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