Vice President Kamala Harris lambasted Donald Trump on Friday as being responsible for erasing abortion rights in the country, one of her most direct attacks on the former president so far as abortion has taken center stage in the upcoming election.
“We all must understand who is to blame. Former President Donald Trump did this,” Harris said at a campaign event in Tucson, Arizona. “During his campaign in 2016, Donald Trump said women should be punished for seeking an abortion.”
Harris’ campaign trip to Arizona comes just days after the state’s high court upheld a 160-year-old law outlawing abortions unless the patient’s life is in danger. Harris blamed Trump in a statement following the ruling, saying, “It’s a reality because of Donald Trump, who brags about being ‘proudly the person responsible’ for overturning Roe v. Wade.”
Trump criticized the Arizona ruling as going too far, just days after he said abortion should be left up to states to decide and that he wouldn’t support a federal ban on the procedure. He doubled down in a Truth Social post just hours before Harris’ event Friday, calling for Arizona officials “to remedy what has happened.”
Multiple aides to the vice president have told POLITICO that Harris has been worried that Trump was going to try to moderate his position publicly. While traveling to Charlotte last week, Harris was told about the former president’s promise to release a statement about abortion this week, possibly calling for a 15-week ban.
“She basically said, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t do the 15 weeks at all, if he tried to do something to muddy the waters. And so we need to be ready to make sure that no matter what his statement says, he’s on the hook for all the state bans that are in existence,’” said a campaign official granted anonymity to speak candidly.
The campaign stop in the battleground state was planned prior to the court decision and was originally meant to be about…
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