Harris holds her first fundraiser as the likely Democratic nominee as donors open their wallets

AP White House Correspondent

PITTSFIELD, Mass. (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris used her first fundraiser since becoming the Democrats’ likely White House nominee to excoriate the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump as determined to roll back Americans’ freedoms.

Harris traveled to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on Saturday where she was expected to raise more than $1.4 million, her campaign announced, from an audience of hundreds at the Colonial Theatre. That would be $1 million-plus more than the original goal set for the event before President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

She told an excited group of supporters that she entered the race as an “underdog,” while expressing confidence that her surging campaign could defeat Trump.

“I will fight to move our nation forward,” Harris said. “Donald Trump intends to take our country backwards.”

Harris also poked at Trump, and his running mate Sen. JD Vance, for lobbing peculiar attacks at her and other Democrats. The vice president appeared to be alluding to a 2021 interview with Vance in which he slammed some prominent Democrats without biological children, including Harris, as “childless cat ladies” with “no direct stake” in America.

“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, it is just plain weird,” Harris said. “I mean that’s the box you put that in, right?”

Harris’ branding the Republican ticket as “weird” appears to be part of a concerted effort by her campaign to spotlight some of Trump and Vance’s rhetoric as questionable. Earlier this week, the Harris campaign on the social media site X called Vance “weird and creepy” for some of his stances on women’s reproductive rights. Trump, meanwhile, has raised the fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter from the film “Silence of the Lambs” in stump speeches.

“These guys are just weird,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat who is on Harris’ shortlist for vice president, said in an MSNBC interview earlier this week. “They’re running for He-man women-haters club or something.”

Supporters for the fundraiser included musician James Taylor and many of the state’s Democratic heavyweights, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, former Gov. Deval Patrick and Rep. Richie Neal.

Harris took in more than $100 million in donations in the first 48 hours after Biden quit the race, a presidential record, and aides said she has continued to raise money at a steady clip.

“This is a people-powered campaign,” Harris said. “And we have momentum.”

Harris, a former prosecutor in her home state of California, also derided Trump for his legal troubles. She noted his recent conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records in New York, a jury finding the former president of being liable for sexual abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996, and a $25 million settlement paid to attendees of the now-defunct real estate seminar called Trump University.

“I’ve been dealing with people like him my entire career,” Harris said. She added, “So in this campaign, and I say in all seriousness, I will proudly put my record against his any day.”

Harris began her remarks with praise for Biden, who opted to end his reelection bid and endorse Harris last weekend after his campaign fell into a tailspin following his disastrous June 27 debate performance against Trump.

She called Biden’s legacy of accomplishment over the past three and a half years “unmatched in modern history.”

Trump denigrated Harris as a “radical left lunatic” who wants to defund the police during a keynote address at a bitcoin conference in Nashville on Saturday.

He said she was worse than Biden but was probably his second preference for a candidate to run against after Biden.

Trump told the crowd of bitcoin supporters that he would embrace the cryptocurrency more than the Biden-Harris administration has and vowed to “replace the Biden-Harris economic stagnation” with an economic boom.

The vice president told supporters at her Massachusetts fundraiser that her economic agenda would sharply contrast with Trump’s, who she claimed is squarely focused on lowering tax rates for wealthy Americans and improving the bottom lines of corporations.

“Building up the middle class will be the defining goal of my presidency,” Harris said. She added, “Let us make no mistake, this campaign is not just about us versus Donald Trump. Our campaign has always been about two very different visions for our nation.”

Separately, the vice president’s office announced Harris would travel on Tuesday to Atlanta for a campaign event, and will head Thursday to Houston to attend a memorial service for Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, 74, a longtime Democratic House member who died on July 20.

Jackson Lee, who had pancreatic cancer, helped lead federal efforts to protect women from domestic violence and recognize Juneteenth as a national holiday.

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Associated Press writer Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.