Vice President Kamala Harris and former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney depicted former President Donald Trump as a threat to democracy and national security in a bipartisan appeal to Republican and undecided voters Monday in Chester County, Pennsylvania, as the 2024 presidential election enters its final stages.
Harris and Cheney launched one campaign trip through three states with a moderated conversation in Malvern. The vice president and former congressman will also be in Michigan and Wisconsin on Monday.
“People all over the world are watching,” the Democratic candidate said. “And sometimes I worry a little about whether we, as Americans, really understand how important we are to the world.”
Monday belonged to Harris second time in Pennsylvania in as many weeks to talk to Republican voters who feel uneasy about voting for Trump. The Keystone State’s 19 electoral votes are crucial to Harris or Trump’s path to victory. CBS News poll conducted by early September, the pair were tied in Pennsylvania at 50% each. Pennsylvania voted for Trump in 2016, but switched to President Biden in 2020.
Harris said she wants to turn the page on the past decade of American politics influenced by the former president, and that her presidency would “mark the beginning of a new generation of leadership.” She said a Harris administration would not be a continuation of a Biden administration and said she would bring her own ideas to the table.
The vice president also claimed that Trump was using the presidency as a way to “demean and divide us.”
“I think people are rightfully exhausted by that,” Harris said. “And it doesn’t build the power of our nation to tell the American people that we should mistrust each other, distrust each other.”
Cheney held Republican leadership in the House of Representatives before she supported Trump’s second impeachment following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and was ultimately defeated by a Trump-backed challenger in a Republican Party primary. She explained that to her decision to support Harris started with her being a conservative who prioritizes the Constitution over her political party. She said the choice between Harris and Trump on foreign policy is “absolutely clear,” calling Trump “completely erratic and completely unstable.”
“Our opponents know they can play Donald Trump,” Cheney said. “They absolutely know they can play against him, and we simply can’t afford that risk.”
The former congresswoman said the choice in the November election comes down to defending the Constitution, pointing out that Trump does not accept the Constitution. results of the 2020 elections And January 6 as proof the former president is a danger to democracy.
“I know that fidelity to the Constitution is the most conservative of all conservative principles,” Cheney said. “You have to choose in this race between someone who has been faithful to the Constitution, who will be faithful, and Donald Trump, who is not just us predicting how he will act. We saw what he did after the last election. We saw what he did on January 6.”
Cheney also said her experience abroad before she was elected to Congress shows how quickly democracies can fall apart.
“I know how quickly democracies can fall apart,” she said. “And I know that as Americans we can get used to thinking, ‘Well, we don’t have to worry about that here.’ But I’ll tell you again, as someone who has seen firsthand how quickly it can happen: It’s on the ballot.”
Cheney said she believes some Republicans will vote for Harris, but she won’t say so publicly.
Harris concluded with a plea to return to a “healthy two-party system.”
“We need to be able to have good, intense debates on issues that are based on facts,” Harris said. “Let’s start there.”
In a statement, Kush Desai, spokesperson for the Trump campaign in Pennsylvania, said of Monday’s event: “Showing off irrelevant former ‘Republicans’ from the past at campaign events does not change the fact that Kamala Harris is running to to expand its record of unrestricted illegal immigration. prizes and endless wars abroad with another four years.”
