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The stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White House
Kamala Harris has raised $200mn for her White House bid in less than a week, her campaign said on Sunday, as the vice-president hopes that the surge in funding will boost her chances against Donald Trump.
The announcement came as the duel between Harris and Trump on the campaign trail intensified.
US President Joe Biden ditched his re-election bid and endorsed the vice-president to succeed him just a week ago, in a move that radically reshaped the race.
Since then Harris has quickly united the Democratic party behind her candidacy and gained some ground against Trump in the opinion polls, compared to Biden’s performance.
She is vetting vice-presidential nominees and is expected to announce her choice in the next two weeks.
But at a fundraiser in Massachusetts on Saturday, Harris conceded that Trump remained the favourite in the election, which will be held 100 days from now, in early November.
“We are the underdogs in this race, but this is a people-powered campaign,” Harris told the donors.
One of Harris’s key tasks is to boost fundraising to make up for a slowdown in donations to Biden after his disastrous debate performance against Trump in late June.
Michael Tyler, the Harris campaign’s communications director, called the first week’s $200mn a “record-shattering haul”.
“Of that amount, 66 per cent came from first-time donors, further proof of the tremendous grassroots support for the vice-president,” he said.
At a rally in Minnesota on Saturday night, two weeks after he survived an assassination attempt, Trump lashed out at Harris, calling her “evil” as he tried to adjust his campaign to target her instead of Biden.
“If a crazy liberal like Kamala Harris gets in, the American dream is dead,” Trump said.
After the attack on his life, Trump had briefly called for “unity” in American politics. But on Saturday, he suggested the time for niceties was already over.
“They all say, ‘I think he’s changed. I think he’s changed since two weeks ago. Something affected him’,” Trump told the crowd. “No, I haven’t changed . . . Maybe I’ve gotten worse. Because I get angry at the incompetence that I witness every single day.”
On Friday, Trump attracted criticism for telling a group of Christian conservatives that they would not have to “vote any more” in four years if they helped elect him this year.
Harris and her campaign are also honing their attacks on Trump. She has sought to emphasise that he is a threat to Americans’ basic freedoms, from abortion rights to voting rights and economic security. She has also called out Trump and his running mate JD Vance for being bizarre and extreme.
“You may have noticed, 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. I mean that’s the box you put that in,” she said on Saturday.
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