As she steps up her appeals to Black voters, Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on a popular Black radio program Tuesday, saying she is still open to slavery reparations and slamming former President Donald Trump for allegedly sending Covid tests to Russia “when Black people were dying” back home.
In a wide-ranging live radio town hall in Detroit hosted by syndicated radio host Charlamagne Tha God, Harris faced pointed questions from the host and his guests, some of whom said they felt Black voters have been taken for granted by Democrats while getting “very little in return.”
Harris, who has been trying to stem Democrats’ small but steady erosion of support from voters of color, spoke about her upbringing in Oakland, California, in the Black church and at Howard University, but said she knew she had to “earn every vote.”
While she often tells supporters on the campaign trail that she is the underdog, she said Tuesday: "I’m going to win, but it’s tight.”
Harris opened a new line of attack on Trump, connecting his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, an issue that has been seen mainly as of concern to educated white progressives, to the well-being of Black Americans.
Drawing on a new book by famed journalist Bob Woodward, Harris slammed Trump for reportedly sending Covid-19 testing devices to Putin when the machines were in short supply back home. NBC News has not been able to independently verify the report.
She said Trump is someone who “admire[s] dictators” and, during the height of the pandemic, sent “Covid tests that nobody could get to the president of Russia for his personal use, when Black people were dying every day by the hundreds.”
“The number of people who lost their grandparents and parents, remember what that was like?” she continued. “People were scrambling for the resources and needed tests, and Donald Trump secretly sent Covid tests to the president of Russia.”
She tried to belittle Trump — which could be an attempt to take away some of the bravado that has appealed to male voters as she has focused particularly on Black men.
"The man is really quite weak. He’s weak," she said. "It’s a sign of weakness that you want to please dictators and seek their flattery and favor. It’s a sign of weakness that you would demean America’s military and America’s service members. It’s a sign of weakness that you don’t have the courage to stand up for the Constitution of the United States and the principles upon which it stands. This man is weak, and he is unfit."
She also suggested she's OK with people saying Trump supports fascism.
"Donald Trump is about taking us backward," Harris said.
"The other is about fascism," Charlamagne interjected. "Why can’t we just say it?"
“Yes, we can say that,” she said with a laugh.
Harris also stood by her early support for studying the idea of slavery reparations, which she embraced during her first presidential run in 2019.
During that campaign, she adopted a number of progressive positions from which she has since distanced herself.
But when she was asked directly Tuesday, Harris responded: “On the point of reparations, it has to be studied. There’s no question about that.”
As a senator, Harris backed a bill that would have created a federal commission to study the policy and develop reparations proposals.
