An old video ad from Vice President Kamala Harris is getting new attention on Sunday, hours after President Joe Biden withdrew his 2024 candidacy and endorsed Harris as his successor.
The video, made during her attempt to win the 2020 Democratic nomination, uses Harris’ accomplishments as a prosecutor to draw a sharp contrast with Donald Trump.
The ad hits Trump as a “sex predator,” years before a jury in New York found him liable for sexual abuse in writer E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case against him. Separately, Trump was also convicted on all 34 counts of falsifying documents, in a New York criminal trial related to hush money payments he made to cover up an alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels.
The spot also hammers at Trump for being “owned by big banks.” Trump has since shifted to big oil, telling industry executives that if they gave $1 billion to his campaign, he’d roll back green energy initiatives.
In many ways, the Harris ad looks like it could still air today ― and is being widely shared on social media as a result:
Harris was a U.S. senator from California at the time, but had previously been the state’s attorney general and, prior to the that, San Francisco’s district attorney.
Harris’ presidential campaign showed promise early on, with three polls showing her in second place after a strong debate performance in the summer of 2019.
But it never really took off from there.
Her polling numbers sank, and she was out of the race by December, some two months before voters went to the polls for the primaries.
She was later selected as Biden’s running mate.
