Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), whom the smart money is on to be Joe Biden’s vice president, accused President Donald Trump in a Thursday evening Vice interview of abandoning “the role of the president of the United States” during the coronavirus crisis, which has resulted in “body bags” piling up across the country.
“There is no question that if we’d had a president in charge who actually took their responsibility seriously, that we would probably be looking at a lot less damage than we have incurred,” Harris reportedly told Vice News. “We watch every day the number of people infected and the number of people who are dead. We are every day hearing and watching stories about body bags. So, look, the buck stops with the president.”
Harris insisted that Trump, from the beginning, “abandoned his role of leadership” and “the role of the president of the United States” in dealing with the coronavirus crisis.
The California Democrat reportedly accused Trump of failing to take the coronavirus outbreak “seriously” and “trivializing the issue including the importance of social distancing.”
A Pew Research poll released this week found that 65% of Americans believe that Trump was “too slow” to respond to the coronavirus crisis.
Harris, who has been intensifying her criticisms of Trump as Biden reportedly gets closer to finalizing his vice presidential selection, also ripped Trump for putting ideology above the “science.”
“The thing about this moment and it also is a source, therefore, of frustration about who this president is and how he has been approaching this issue: this is science. These things just don’t lie,” Harris reportedly added. “Science is based on empirical data. Science is based on peer review. Science is based on analysis, objective analysis.”