Blasting Donald Trump for his failed leadership, Indian-origin Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris has called him a "President who turns tragedies into political weapons".
Harris, 55, scripted history on Wednesday by becoming the first Black and Indian descent individual to be nominated as a vice-presidential candidate of a major political party.
"Donald Trump's failure of leadership has cost lives and livelihoods," Harris said in her acceptance speech before virtual Democratic National Convention.
Last week, she was picked by Joe Biden, the presidential nominee of the Democratic party as his running mate. Biden will deliver his acceptance speech Thursday night.
"We must elect a president who will bring something different, something better, and do the important work. A president who will bring all of us together-Black, White, Latino, Asian, Indigenous-to achieve the future we collectively want," Harris said, making a passionate plea before Americans to vote them to power in the November presidential elections.
"We must elect Joe Biden. I knew Joe as Vice President. I knew Joe on the campaign trail. But I first got to know Joe as the father of my friend," she said.
Alleging that right now, the US has "a president who turns our tragedies into political weapons," Harris said that Biden will be a president who turns our challenges into purpose.
"Joe will bring us together to build an economy that doesn't leave anyone behind. Where a good-paying job is the floor, not the ceiling. Joe will bring us together to end this pandemic and make sure that we are prepared for the next one," she said.
Meanwhile, Several prominent Indian-Americans have applauded Kamala Harris formally becoming the Democratic Party nominee to be the US vice-president, describing it as a historic moment in American politics and a quantum leap forward for the community.
Harris misses her mother
Accepting the Democratic Party's historic nomination for the US vice-president, Kamala Harris fondly remembered her Chennai-born mother who instilled in her the values like compassion and service to others which helped her to grow as a strong Black woman and be proud of her Indian heritage.
Harris opened her vice-presidential acceptance speech by remembering her late mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, lamenting the fact that she could not be there to see her daughter's achievement.
"My mother taught me that service to others gives life purpose and meaning. And oh, how I wish she were here tonight but I know she's looking down on me from above," she said.
For POTUS, presidency is a reality show: Obama
In his most blistering attack on Donald Trump, former president Barack Obama has accused his successor of treating the presidency like a "reality show" and said the top Republican leader "hasn't grown into the job because he can't." Obama, the country's first Black president, spoke on the third night of the virtual Democratic National Convention on Wednesday just before Senator Kamala Harris of California became the first Black person to be formally nominated for vice-president by a major party.
Obama said that both Biden and Harris have the experience needed to get things done and they have concrete policies that will turn their vision of a better, fairer, stronger country into reality.
But he had some very harsh words for President Trump.
"I have sat in the Oval Office with both of the men who are running for president. I never expected that my successor would embrace my vision or continue my policies," Obama said.
"I did hope, for the sake of our country, that Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously; that he might come to feel the weight of the office and discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care," Obama said in an unusually strong criticism of Trump during his remarks.
"For close to four years now, he's shown no interest in putting in the work; no interest in finding common ground; no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends; no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves.
Meet US President, the troublemaker
On Joe Biden's big day, President Donald Trump is planning to show up in his rival's old backyard.
Trump, in what can only be described as a piece of campaign trolling, on Thursday afternoon was staging an event just outside the former vice president's birthplace in Scranton, Pennsylvania, mere hours before Biden formally accepts the Democratic nomination for president.
The political tradition of a presidential candidate lying low during the other party's convention has eroded over the decades but - to the private delight of Trump's advisers - the president's trip looked to be a particularly in-your-face piece of counter-programming designed to rattle an opponent.
The campaign said Trump's speech would cover "a half-century of Joe Biden failing America." The event points to the importance of Pennsylvania as a battleground state - and to the urgency of the president's effort to close the gap in the polls.
