Published 20 hours ago
Sen. Kamala Harris framed the vice presidential debate with Vice President Mike Pence around the Trump administration’s cavalier response to the coronavirus pandemic while thwarting his attempts to interrupt her several times during the debate.
The debate Wednesday (October 7) night was far more subdued than last week’s contentious showdown between Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden, even though Pence seemed to make a better case for Trump’s campaign than Trump himself did last week.RELATED: Five Things To Watch For When Kamala Harris And Mike Pence Go Toe-To-Toe
Noting early in the debate that the Trump administration failed to create a response to the entry of coronavirus into the United States despite knowing that it was coming, Harris went in early on the vice president and stuck to breaking him down for nearly 30 minutes.
“The vice president and president knew that it was lethal in consequence, that it was airborne, that it would affect young people…and they knew what was happening and they didn’t tell you,” she said, looking directly at the television audience. “Can you imagine if you knew on Jan. 28 as opposed to March 13 what they knew, what you might have done to prepare?” She then outlined Biden’s plan to provide contact tracing and a search for a vaccine to stop the spread of the disease.
Photo by Morry Gash-Pool/Getty Images
Pence, who is head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, accused Biden of saying that Trump’s plan to shut down travel from China to prevent entry was “xenophobic.” But he said the action “saved hundreds of thousands of American lives,” and later saying “the reality is under the Biden plan,
