CHICAGO — Just after Vice President Kamala Harris wrapped up her headliner speech at the Democratic National Convention Thursday, former President Donald Trump had one question.
“Why didn’t she do the things she’s complaining about,” Trump pondered during a subsequent interview on Fox News.
Trump, 78, immediately slammed Harris on the border, which is one of several favorable hot-button issues for him in polling that Harris, 59, at which has worked hard to chip away.
“She didn’t do any of it. She could have done it three and a half years ago. She could do it tonight by leaving the auditorium and going to Washington, DC, and closing the border. She doesn’t need a bill. I didn’t have a bill. I closed the border,” he added.
During her roughly 40-minute-long nomination acceptance speech to conclude the Democratic National Convention, Harris blamed Trump for the crisis unfolding at the US-Mexico border, accusing him of spiking a bipartisan deal in the Senate to bolster security.
“Trump ordered his allies in Congress to kill the deal. I refuse to play politics with our security. And here is my pledge to you: As president, I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed, and I will sign it into law,” she vowed.
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) alongside Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) helped craft that legislation, which would’ve marshaled resources for US Customs and Border Patrol as well as made deep reforms to the asylum-seeking process, but an overwhelming majority of Senate Republicans voted against it.
Follow along with The Post’s live reporting of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Trump stressed that “she’s got four and a half, five months left.”
The 45th president further zinged his 2024 rival for not talking enough about China, fracking, crime, poverty, and “child trafficking that she’s allowed to happen because she was the border czar.”
Harris dedicated a significant portion of her speech toward a discussion of foreign policy, during which she alleged that “tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong-Un” are “rooting for Trump” so that they could manipulate him with “flattery and favors.”
She also dusted off a go-to Democratic tactic against Trump — tying him to Project 2025, a blueprint for a future Republican administration developed by the Heritage Foundation alongside a constellation of conservative groups and ex-Trump administration employees.
“She knows I have nothing to do with Project 2025, they throw it out. A group of people got together, they did a thing, I haven’t even seen it,” he told Fox News of the vilified policy plan. “I don’t want to see it. I told them specifically I don’t want to see it.”
Trump and his campaign have long sought to distance themselves from Project 2025, which developed a more than 900-page game plan to dramatically overhaul the federal government.
In addition to the border, another issue that Harris has sought to claim from Trump is taxes. She pledged to pursue middle-class tax cuts “that will benefit more than 100 million Americans.” Harris also slammed his plan for up to 10% tariffs on imported goods, is “in effect is a national sales tax — call it a Trump tax.”
“I lower taxes. She’s raising taxes. She’s going to give a tax increase,” Trump countered. “The country will go into a depression if they do it.”
He also took aim at her support for President Biden’s pitch to jack up the corporate tax rate to 28%.
“She wants to raise the taxes on corporations. What they’re going to do is pick up and move to another country,” Trump said. “They’re international companies. If she raises taxes like she wants to do on companies, there goes those jobs. I’m more interested in the jobs than the companies.”
Harris and Trump are set to square off in a debate hosted by ABC News on Sept. 10 in Philadelphia.
“I don’t like ABC, but I’m willing to do ABC,” Trump said. “I am willing to debate. And I think we should do much more than one debate,” noting that Harris turned down a Sept. 4 debate that would’ve aired on Fox News.
“I am ready, willing and able.”
