Vice President Kamala Harris officially visited Greensboro on Thursday afternoon for the Biden-Harris campaign. It was her sixth visit to North Carolina this year and her fourteenth overall since taking office.
Fellow Democrat North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper was among those welcoming her to the stage at James B. Dudley High School.
Cooper repeated many of the same talking points he said during President Joe Biden’s rally in Raleigh on June 28th, the day after Biden’s disastrous debate with former President Donald Trump, which has served as a catalyst to many asking for the 46 US President to drop out of the race for The White House.
He is reportedly being considered as the first choice as a running mate for Harris if Biden were to drop out of the race and she were to become the nominee. That’s according to a report in The New York Times,
Harris would later acknowledge that she and Cooper had known each other for years, working together while she was attorney general in California and Cooper in North Carolina.
“Roy, I thank you for the partnership you have given President Biden and me,” she told Cooper. “You’ve been extraordinary as a leader.”
Harris said she was glad to be in a historic place where the leaders have always been on the front lines in the fight for civil rights when the crowd started to speak over her and chanted “Four More Years,” to which she scolded them.
“Four more years, that’s what we’re looking for,” Harris repeated back..” So, as I was saying, this is an extraordinary community of people who have always fought for civil rights and for the rights of all people to speak when it is their turn to speak, and of course, all voices are important.”
She noted that as of Thursday, the general election is 117 days away, acknowledging that the election has been tough, especially in recent days, the most important one in our lifetime, and stood up for Biden.
“But one thing we know about our President Joe Biden is that he is a fighter, and he is the first to say when you get knocked down, you get back up,” she said.
Harris said she and Biden took on big pharma and lowered the cost of prescription drugs, made it possible that medical debt could no longer be used against a person’s credit score, and have forgiven student loan debt for nearly five million Americans.
That move not only wiped out student loans, but also added to the national debt. According to the Congressional Budget Office, it added 27% or $400 billion to the federal budget deficit, leaving taxpayers on the hook to pick up the tab.
She also said that she and Biden passed the first major gun safety law in nearly 30 years to strengthen background checks, created the first White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention and invested $1 billion to hire mental health counselors in public schools to help heal the mental trauma of gun violence.
Harris said that Biden deserves the credit for strengthening NATO, “the greatest military alliance the world has ever known,” making it stronger, more united, and, more effective than ever. She said their administration is standing up to Russian President Vladimir Putin, while Trump embraces him
“As Trump bows down to dictators, he makes America weak, and that is disqualifying for someone who wants to be Commander in Chief of the United States of America,” she told the crowd.
She would later misspeak on several areas of Project 2025, organized by The Heritage Foundation, which consists of a coalition of conservative organizations with conservative policy recommendations for a transition from the present administration.
She noted that the project has plans to cut Social Security, repeal a $35 cap on insulin, limit access to contraception, and calls for a nationwide abortion ban, which are all untrue, according to Heritage.
While it is true that project calls for the elimination of the Department of Education, as Harris said, it would also create a federal Parents’ Bill of Rights, giving parents more of a voice when it comes to their children’s education.
Trump is said to have distanced himself from the project.
Harris repeated her mantra that a woman does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs when it comes to reproductive freedom, adding that she can talk with her pastor, priest, or rabbi, but the government shouldn’t be telling her what to do with her body.
She added that Trump, if given the chance, will sign a national abortion ban, which is also false, as CNN and many other news outlets have also reported. If Biden were to be re-elected, Harris said that Congress could pass a bill that restored Roe V. Wade and Biden would sign it into law.
Aside from Biden winning again, which is currently on shaky ground, Democrats would also have to simultaneously reclaim the House and hold the Senate to pass such legislation.
Harris ended her speech with a question for the audience.
“What kind of country do we want to live in?” she asked. “That’s the question being posed to each one of us. Do we want to live in a country of freedom, compassion, and rule of law, or a country of chaos, fear, and hate?”
One question that Harris didn’t address was the chaos at the southern border and how, as the Biden Administration’s “Border Czar,” she has never visited the border once since taking office.
One person who has been personally affected by the fentanyl crisis, which has exploded under the open border policy of the Biden Administration, is Addison McDowell, Republican Congressional NC-06 candidate. He lost his brother to the drug.
“I lost my little brother Luke to fentanyl poisoning,” he said on a phone call with reporters Thursday morning, along with Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page, a longtime proponent of border security. His brother died in 2016 when Biden was vice president. “One pill manufactured in China and smuggled through our open border cost him his life and put a permanent hole in our family. I still feel today, like I’ve lost my arm. A piece of me will be missing forever.”
McDowell said he had a front-row seat to the devastation of what an open border can do to families in our country.
“I had to be there for my mother after a police officer came to the door to tell her that her 20-year-old son was dead,” he said. “I watched my father, who’s a pastor, do a funeral service for his own son. I had to get married without my best man.”
McDowell said the Biden-Harris Administration policies created an unmitigated disaster and inspired him to run for office. He said both Biden and Harris could stop the border crisis today if they wanted to, but instead, they have endangered every family in North Carolina, with overdose deaths increasing 22% in Biden’s first year in office. Their policies, he said, are what inspired him to run for office.
He also went on to mention the problems with illegal aliens in the state, and the rising cost of groceries and food that are affecting all North Carolinians.