Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his newly named running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, made their first joint appearance Wednesday following Biden's announcement of the selection a day earlier. "I have no doubt that I picked the right person to join me as the next vice president of the United States of America," Biden said in scripted remarks at a high school in his hometown of Wilmington, Del. Harris is the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, and Biden's choice will make her the third woman — and first woman of color — to be nominated for vice president by a major political party. "This morning," Biden said, "all across the nation, little girls woke up, especially little Black and brown girls who so often feel overlooked and undervalued in our communities, but today, today just maybe they're seeing themselves, for the first time, in a new way — as the stuff of presidents and vice presidents." According to a NPR report, Biden criticized President Donald Trump's personal attacks on Harris. Trump called Harris "nasty," and Biden said Trump is "whining about how she's been 'mean' to his appointees." Biden added: "It's no surprise because whining is what Donald Trump does better than any president in American history." The report said, Biden noted the day marked the third anniversary of the racist violence in Charlottesville, Va., which he says caused him to decide to run for president to wage "a battle for the soul of the nation." In her first remarks since being announced as Biden's running mate, Harris said she was mindful of the "heroic and ambitious women before me," using a word that had reportedly been levied against her as a critique, the same NPR report said. She recounted her experience as a prosecutor and said the "case against Donald Trump and Mike Pence is open and shut." "We need more than a victory on Nov. 3; we need a mandate that proves the past few years do not represent who we are or who we aspire to be," she said. She also talked about the special relationship she formed with Biden's late son, Beau, whom she worked with when he was Delaware's attorney general. In a tweet earlier Wednesday, Biden shared a video that documents the moment he asked Harris to join the ticket, asking, "You ready to go to work?" Trump, in a press briefing Tuesday, began his criticism of the new vice presidential candidate, calling her the "most liberal person in the Senate." In a statement Wednesday, the Trump campaign blasted Harris for pushing "Biden even farther to the left than he had already moved" and that "Joe Biden and Kamala Harris together make up the most extreme, leftist ticket in American major party history." — Agencies
