‘Crazy’ v ‘liar’: Harris and Trump draw battlelines

The former president and incumbent Vice-President Kamala lay out their campaign attack lines with 100 days until the election.

Kamala Harris arrives to board Air Force Two at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Saturday for her flight to Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Picture: AFP

Donald Trump has labelled Vice- President Kamala Harris a “crazy liberal”, and she vowed to prevail over his “wild lies”, as both laid out campaign attack lines with just 100 days until the election.

After addressing a bitcoin conference in Tennessee, Mr Trump rallied supporters on Saturday night in Minnesota, seeking to make the historically Democratic midwest state a battleground.

“This November, the American people are going to reject Kamala Harris’s crazy liberal extremism in a massive landslide,” Mr Trump told the crowd assembled in a hockey arena.

He quickly took aim at several positions Ms Harris adopted during her 2020 Democrat primary campaign, some of which she has since walked back, such as a desire to ban fracking or overhaul the criminal justice system.

Calling Ms Harris a “radical-left lunatic”, the Republican candidate also hammered her and

President Joe Biden’s record on illegal immigration, inflation and crime – all of which spiked during their term but returned to historical averages in recent months.

In his 90-minute speech, he also repeated pledges to “have the largest deportation effort” in US history and end taxation of tips, while repeating unfounded allegations that his 2020 election loss had been “rigged”.

Ms Harris held a fundraising event in Massachusetts on Saturday with celebrity guests including singer-songwriter James Taylor and cellist Yoyo Ma.

“We are the underdogs in this race, but this is a people-powered campaign,” the Vice-President told the crowd at the event, which her campaign said would net $US1.4 ($2.1m). “Donald Trump has been resorting to some wild lies about my record. And some of what he and his running mate are saying, well, it’s just plain weird.”

The Harris campaign has adopted “weird” as a new catch-all for describing Mr Trump’s aggressive rhetoric. His attacks, repeated on Saturday, include allegations Ms Harris wants to legalise killing newborn babies – a falsehood stemming from the Vice-President’s fervent support of abortion rights.

Ms Harris has made her advocacy on the issue central to her campaign against Mr Trump, whose three conservative nominees to the Supreme Court helped overturn the national right to the procedure in 2022.

Donald Trump arrives on stage at Herb Brooks National Hockey Centre in St Cloud, Minnesota on Saturday. Picture: Getty Images

Mr Trump on Saturday thanked all six conservative judges by name “for the wisdom and courage they showed on this long-term, very contentious issue”.

Ms Harris also challenged Mr Trump to a debate, after his campaign said last week he would not agree to keeping a September 10 televised face-off previously scheduled with Mr Biden. “I hope he reconsiders because we have a lot to talk about,” she said.

Mr Trump, 78, now the oldest major-party nominee in history is scrambling to reorient a campaign against someone two decades his junior, having expected to face an ailing 81-year-old Mr Biden.

On Saturday, he made his pitch to the cryptocurrency industry, one he previously called a “scam”. Saying China or others could seize the reins on the fast-growing field, Mr Trump’s appeal has been welcomed by crypto enthusiasts who feel they have been treated harshly by the Biden administration.

“If crypto is going to define the future, I want (it) to be mined, minted and made in the USA,” he said to cheers, calling for the US to be “the crypto capital of the planet”.

Mr Trump also vowed a return to outdoor rallies two weeks after being wounded in an attempted assassination at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. He has made the shooting a key part of his campaign pitch, telling supporters he “took a bullet for democracy.”

Ms Harris, 59, seeking to become the first female president in US history, is tasked with rapidly assembling a campaign against an opponent who has been in near permanent re-election mode since he became president in 2016.

Her late-starting White House bid has enjoyed early momentum. Polls that had shown Mr Biden steadily slipping against Mr Trump now show Ms Harris in a practical tie. She has garnered support from Democratic heavyweights, including Mr Biden himself and, on Friday, Barack and Michelle Obama.

Torianna Parrish, 34, was among the crowd greeting Ms Harris’s arrival on Saturday at the airport in Westfield, Massachusetts. “I wanted to show there’s power in numbers. I wanted to show my support,” Ms Parrish said. “We’re rooting for her and we want to see her make this country what it needs to be.”

AFP