Kamala Harris planned on Saturday to release a report on her health and medical history, showing that “she possesses the physical and mental resilience necessary to successfully discharge the duties of the presidency” if voters elect her election in November, a senior aide to her campaign said.
The aide said the vice president’s advisers saw the release of the health report and medical history as an opportunity to draw attention to questions about Republican White House candidate Donald Trump’s physical fitness and mental acuity. The 78-year-old Trump has also not released any information about his health, although he would be the oldest elected president if Americans were to give him a second term in the Oval Office.
As Guardian US reported earlier in October, Trump has become increasingly incoherent at campaign rallies. Medical experts say he has lied, stumbled over his words, hurled expletives – and shown signs of cognitive decline consistent with someone approaching 80.
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In recent speeches he has railed on topics ranging from his supposedly “beautiful” body to “a million Rambos” in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Harris campaign aides pointed to Trump’s withdrawal from an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes that the vice president had granted and his refusal to debate her again after their Sept. 10 confrontation. They allege that the former president is “dodging public scrutiny” and giving voters “the impression… that he has something to hide and may not be fit for the job.”
“Compare her age and vitality to his,” Harris’ senior aide, 59, said early Saturday.
Questions about whether he was too weakened forced Joe Biden to abandon his bid for re-election as president over the summer. The 81-year-old Democrat dropped out of a rematch with Trump on July 21 and endorsed Harris as his successor.
Recent national polling averages show Harris with a nearly four-point lead over Trump in the Nov. 5 presidential race. But key swing states are still too close to call, and most experts expect competitive elections.
The Republican Party chose Trump as its nominee even though he was convicted in May of criminally falsifying corporate records to cover up hush-money payments to an adult film actor who claimed he had an extramarital sexual encounter with him, about a decade before his successful run for the presidency. 2016. Among other legal troubles, he faces criminal charges that he illegally tried to overturn his defeat to Biden in the 2020 election.
Trump, for his part, has insisted that Biden “became mentally disabled.” He also said Harris was “born that way” as he struggled to pronounce the vice president’s name.
At a town hall in Las Vegas on Thursday, Harris told a group of undecided voters “in disparaging language… [is not] healthy for our nation.”
“I don’t admire that,” Harris said. “And actually, I’m quite critical of it coming from someone who wants to be president of the United States.”
