Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who has stayed largely out of the political limelight since leaving office, sharply criticized President Donald Trump – her opponent in the 2024 presidential election – over tariffs, government cuts, and the direction his administration is taking the country, during remarks on Wednesday in San Francisco.
Her remarks, delivered at the 20th anniversary celebration for Emerge, an organization that supports Democratic women running for office, came as the Trump administration celebrates its accomplishments in its first 100 days – a date Harris acknowledged.
“Now I know tonight’s event happens to coincide with 100 days after the inauguration, and I’ll leave it to others to give a full accounting of what’s happened so far,” Harris told the audience.
“But I will say this, instead of an administration working to advance America’s highest ideals, we are witnessing the wholesale abandonment of those ideals,” she said.
Harris has had few public appearances since departing the White House and has limited her political activity, but on Wednesday night, she called out Trump by name.
“We all know President Trump, his administration and their allies are counting on the notion that fear can be contagious. They are counting on the notion that, if they can make some people afraid, it will have a chilling effect on others,” Harris said.
“But what they’re overlooking, what they’ve overlooked, is that fear isn’t the only thing that’s contagious. Courage is contagious,” Harris said to raucous cheers.
Harris had brought up similar themes – including the “courage is contagious” line – during remarks at a women of color leaders summit in early April.
That courage, Harris added on Wednesday, extends to Americans protesting against what she called “the greatest man-made economic crisis in modern presidential history.”
“Americans across the political spectrum who are declaring that the president’s reckless tariffs hurt workers and families by raising the cost of everyday essentials; devastate the retirement accounts that people spent a lifetime paying into; and paralyze American businesses, large and small forcing them to lay off people, stop hiring, or pause investment decisions,” she said.
Trump and the White House have argued that tariffs will help Americans be better off economically in the long run and will level the playing field between the U.S. and its trading partners.
Later in her remarks, speaking more broadly about the White House’s actions, Harris said she would describe the current moment in America as a “high-velocity event” to implement an agenda she claimed was “decades in the making” to shrink and privatize government while giving tax breaks to the wealthy.
“It’s an agenda, a narrow self-serving vision of America, where they punish truth tellers, favor loyalists, cash in on their power and leave everyone to fend for themselves, all while abandoning allies and retreating from the world,” Harris said. “And folks, what we are experiencing right now is exactly what they envision for America.”
Americans should be ready, if the “checks and balances” such as Congress “ultimately collapse,” Harris said, to work together and raise their voices.
“I am not here tonight to offer all the answers, but I am here to say this, you are not alone, and we are all in this together — and straight talk, things are probably going to get worse before they get better, but we are ready for it. We are not going to scatter. We are going to stand together, everyone a leader,” Harris said.
At the end of her remarks, Harris struck a populist note: “Always remember this country is ours. It doesn’t belong to whoever is in the White House. It belongs to you. It belongs to us. It belongs to We The People.”
The former Democratic nominee for president has had few public appearances since departing the White House, and has limited her political activity.
Harris’ speech came as she is set to possibly re-enter politics in the coming months. Harris has been mulling a run in California’s gubernatorial race and will make a decision by the end of summer, two sources familiar with her plans told ABC News in March.
Some Democrats have also floated her as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, although some of her longtime supporters have told ABC News they are torn over that prospect.
Whether she runs for either office or not, Harris’ public remarks thus far have sometimes included veiled and explicit swipes at the Trump administration and the president himself.
In remarks at a women of color leaders summit in early April, she weighed in on the second Trump administration, saying “there is a sense of fear that has been taking hold in our country” but that “courage is also contagious.”
And in remarks at the NAACP Image Awards in February, Harris framed the “chapter” America is in as one that “will be written not simply by whoever occupies the oval office nor by the wealthiest among us. The American story will be written by you. Written by us. By we the people.”
Harris and her spouse, Doug Emhoff, have been the target of recent actions by Trump.
Trump issued a memo in March that revoked the security clearances and access to classified information of his previous presidential opponents — Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris — as well as more than a dozen former administration officials. On Tuesday, Emhoff said he had been dismissed from the board of trustees of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum as the White House confirmed it had removed board members.
-ABC News’ Averi Harper, Zohreen Shah, Gabriella Abdul-Hakim and Kelsey Walsh contributed to this report.
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