Kamala Harris unveils plan for elderly; accuses Trump of helping Putin over dying Americans

Kamala Harris accused Donald Trump of prioritising Vladimir Putin over US citizens dying of Covid but slipped up over her differences with Joe Biden in a media blitz of friendly interviews.

Kamala Harris in studio at ABC during a break during the recording of the show The View. Picture: AFP.

Kamala Harris has pledged to increase at-home care support for seniors if she wins the November election and accused Donald Trump of secretly “helping out an adversary,” seizing on revelations the former president had secretly sent Covid tests to Russia’s Vladimir Putin in early 2020.

But in a gaffe in a separate TV interview, Ms Harris said she and Joe Biden were “two different people” but could not identify anything she would have done differently to the current President over the last four years.

Ms Harris, who has this week embarked on a media blitz ahead of the November 5 election, launched the attack on Mr Trump in a friendly interview with radio host Howard Stern on SiriusXM after earlier appearing on The View where she unveiled plans to assist older Americans.

“What we will do is allow Medicare to cover in-home health care,” Ms Harris told The View. “I took care of my mother when she was sick. She was diagnosed with cancer. So it is a personal experience for me, as well as something I care deeply about.”

Ms Harris said the plan to expand Medicare was aimed at assisting the “sandwich generation” – those raising children while also taking care of their ageing parents – and revealed it would be paid for by clawing back savings from drug price negotiations with big pharmaceutical companies.

“There are so many people in our country who are right in the middle. They’re taking care of their kids, and they’re taking care of their ageing parents. And it’s just almost impossible to do it all,” she said.

During her 65 minute spot with Stern, the longest continuous interview of her campaign to date, Ms Harris sought to capitalise on revelations contained in the new book War written by high-profile journalist Bob Woodward.

Woodward writes that Mr Trump had sent to Mr Putin “a bunch of Abbott Point of Care Covid test machines for his personal use” while he was still president in early 2020 and that the former US president had spoken to the Russian leader up to seven times since leaving office.

“This guy who was president of the United States is sending them to Russia to a murderous dictator for his own personal use,” Ms Harris told Stern. “This person who wants to be president again who secretly is helping out an adversary when the American people are dying by the hundreds every day and in need of relief.”

She also took aim at Mr Trump’s decision to drop out of an interview with 60 minutes to avoid being fact-checked, flexed her law and order credentials by talking up her time as a prosecutor – declaring “I have put a lot of people in jail” – and admonished the former president for being a “sore loser” after he failed to accept the result of the 2020 election.

Reflecting on her feelings during the debate with Mr Trump when he gave oxygen to claims that immigrants in Ohio were eating people’s pets, Ms Harris said “there were a couple of moments at least in the debate where it was surreal, honestly.”

“This was a very serious moment to earn the votes of the American people, and he was talking about things that were factually untrue and quite ridiculous.”

Presenting a more personal side to the public, Ms Harris also talked about her musical interests in Prince and U2, her love of Formula 1 race car driving, identified her favourite driver as Lewis Hamilton and detailed her daily fitness regimen of 30-45 minutes on an elliptical machine.