A day after Vice President Kamala Harris took over the Democratic presidential campaign, her husband delivered a broad indictment of Donald Trump and Republicans Tuesday as the party that bans books, disenfranchises voters and bars Americans from learning certain “facts.”
Second gentleman Doug Emhoff blasted Mr. Trump and the GOP for taking away “autonomy” during a visit to an abortion clinic in Northern Virginia, where he promoted more access to abortions.
Asked by reporters to respond to Mr. Trump’s calling his wife names, Mr. Emhoff replied, “That’s all he’s got?”
“You heard the vice president [on Monday] making the case against Donald Trump very clearly,” he said.
“We’re going to prosecute the case against Donald Trump and his lies, his gaslighting, his — during Covid, the dereliction of duty, inciting an insurrection and all those other things,” Mr. Emhoff said.
He also said Ms. Harris’ presidential campaign intends to reverse what he characterized as Republicans’ move to restrict personal freedoms since the Supreme Court overturned a national right to abortion in the Dobbs case two years ago.
“We’re also going to move on from this type of environment, this Dobbs, where freedoms are taken away, where autonomy is taken away, where they’re telling you [that] you can’t read this book, they’re telling you you can’t learn this fact, they’re telling you [that] you can’t vote,” he said. “All that is going to change and it must change.”
Ms. Harris took over the presidential campaign after 81-year-old President Biden bowed out on Sunday, heeding calls from top Democrats to quit over concerns that he couldn’t beat Mr. Trump.
She has already locked up enough delegates to receive the Democratic nomination in Chicago on Aug. 19 and could receive the nomination before that. The campaign said it raised a record $81 million in the first 24 hours after Mr. Biden bowed out.
Mr. Emhoff, 59, said his wife “has united the party.”
“She’s going to unite the country,” he said. “She’s going to earn this nomination. You see that happening. And she’s going to win this election. You see the enthusiasm, you see the excitement, you saw the money raised, you saw the party coalesce. You saw the broad base of support that she had in just one or two days. Because she’s talking about an America that we all have a place in.”
Mr. Emhoff attended a pro-choice roundtable discussion with Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra at Meadow Reproductive Health and Wellness, an abortion clinic in McLean, Virginia.
A lawyer by trade, Mr. Emhoff said Mr. Trump created an American “hellscape” by appointing conservative justices who overturned national abortion rights.
He said Texas’ abortion law, which bans all abortions except to save the life of the pregnant woman, is “barbaric, immoral.”
“What we’ve seen is a full-blown crisis,” he said.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.