Kamala Harris took aim at Donald Trump’s notoriously non-committal relationship with the truth Monday morning ahead of both candidates taking the stage at their first presidential debate.
The vice president made the comments during an interview with The Rickey Smiley Show ahead of her showdown with Trump on Tuesday night. “He’s played through this really old entire playbook where there’s no floor for him in terms of how low he will go,” Harris said. “And we should be prepared for that, we should be prepared for the fact that he is not burdened by telling the truth.”
“We should be prepared for the fact he’s probably going to speak a lot of untruth,” she went on. “He tends to fight for himself, not for the American people, and I think that’s going to come out during the debate. I think he’s gonna lie.”
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Ahead of Tuesday, Harris’ comments would appear to presage a confrontation similar in tone to the one that went down last time two presidential candidates went head-to-head, with Trump and President Joe Biden trading barbs and slights during their debate in late June.
In the months since, Trump has indeed hardly shied from leveling highly personal attacks against the new Democratic candidate. He has referred to Harris, variously, as a “HORRIBLE INCOMPETENT BORDER CZAR,” “Dumb as a Rock,” “totally inept,” and the “Worst Vice President in the History of the United States.”
While perhaps not quite to the same extent, Harris has also not held back, describing the former president as “an unserious man” and “unable to comprehend anything other than service to himself,” while also implying the Republican candidate is of a “type” with “predators, fraudsters and cheaters.”
Whether Trump’s belligerence will hold up against Harris in the same way it did going round for round against an increasingly confused and tired-sounding Biden—who stumbled repeatedly over his talking points during the June debate, and whose disastrous performance ultimately precipitated his withdrawal from the race—remains to be seen.
Generally, however, the BBC reports that voters are eager for “more policy and less political sparring,” with both candidates therefore under considerable pressure of expectation to dig deep on the ideological groundings of their mutual apparent contempt.
