US Vice President Kamala Harris said Wednesday she was “scared as heck” that Donald Trump would return to the White House in the November election and urged Democrats to “fight back.”
Her comments came after Trump stormed to victory on Monday in the Iowa caucuses, the first step in the Republican nomination race to challenge President Joe Biden later this year.
“I am scared as heck, which is why I’m traveling our country… we should all be scared,” she told The View, an all female-hosted talk show on the ABC network.
But the 59-year-old Harris added: “We don’t run away from something when we’re scared, we fight back against it.”
Harris was responding to a question about reports former president Barack Obama was concerned with the Biden campaign, and to comments by ex-first lady Michelle Obama saying she was “terrified” of a second Trump term.
Biden has stepped up direct attacks on Trump recently, warning that the twice-impeached former president — who faces 91 criminal indictments — poses a threat to US democracy.
The president’s reelection campaign has been giving Harris an increasingly prominent role as it seeks mobilize Black, female and young voters for this year’s crucial election.
Harris is a triple-trailblazer as first female, first Black and first South Asian vice president, and has been a big fundraising draw for Democrats.
But she suffers from low approval ratings and is a repeated target for Republican attacks saying she’s unqualified to take over as president if anything happened to the 81-year-old Biden.
Next week Harris will embark on a nationwide tour to promote reproductive freedoms as Democrats seek to make abortion rights a key issue in the 2024 race.
Harris kicks off the tour in the pivotal swing state of Wisconsin on Monday, coinciding with the 51st anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision that granted a constitutional right to abortion.
Trump has repeatedly taken credit for the court overturning the landmark ruling last year, as he appointed a series of conservative judges to the bench during his first term.
Harris received praise on her abortion messaging from an unlikely quarter — Trump’s former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
“What Kamala is doing, right or wrong, is very powerful among young women,” she told conservative Fox News.
