Jill Biden defended Kamala Harris against “lies” being told about her during a campaign swing in Arizona, as a new poll shows Donald Trump leading in the critical battleground state.
Trump leads 51% to Harris’ 46% in the state, according to a New York Times/Sienna poll.
Arizona is one of the most contested battlegrounds in the 2024 election. Both the Harris and Trump campaigns are spending considerable resources on this.
And it’s where Jill Biden made her first campaign stop for Kamala Harris, promoting her candidacy at two days of events.
The first lady used her time on the campaign trail to criticize Donald Trump for supporting abortion bans and tax breaks for corporations, describing the former president as greedy and selfish.
Jill Biden made her first campaign stop for Kamala Harris, rallying voters in Arizona
He also addressed “lies” about Harris, who has been the subject of conspiracy theories and false claims by Trump.
“You’re probably already hearing all kinds of lies about Kamala,” he said at an event in Yuma on Friday night. He went on to describe Harris’ work as attorney general, senator and vice president of California.
Trump has falsely accused Harris of lying about working at McDonalds as a teenager and has misrepresented the role she played in the Biden administration’s work on border security.
Jill Biden painted a more compassionate picture of the Democratic presidential candidate, talking about her crime-fighting work as attorney general and how she helped a high school friend who was living in an abusive situation.
“That’s the Kamala Harris I know: a fast, tough, compassionate and decisive leader, and that’s the kind of president Arizona deserves,” he said.
And Biden repeatedly attacked Trump for his role in appointing Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“Donald Trump’s abortion ban has taken away that ability from women to make their own health care decisions,” she said.
“No one has to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to accept that the government should not tell women what to do with their bodies,” she said to huge applause.
Reproductive rights have proven to be a winning issue for Democrats, who used them to rally their base at the polls in the 2022 midterm elections.
Much of the first lady’s five-day, five-state campaign will focus on mobilizing voters on this issue.
He also repeated some lines about Trump that he used when campaigning for President Biden and changed them to work for Harris.
‘As president, Kamala Harris is going to fight for you. “Donald Trump still wakes up every day thinking about one person: himself,” he said.
“Another Donald Trump presidency would cause more chaos, more greed, and more division. He still wants to lower taxes for the rich like him, while costs rise for everyone else.
A New York Times/Siena poll showed Donald Trump leading Kamala Harris by six points in Arizona: the state is hotly contested in the 2024 presidential election.
In addition to the first lady, Harris’ campaign sent running mate Tim Walz and second gentleman Doug Emhoff to Arizona. Harris will also be in state.
Early voting has begun in Arizona, and the first lady reminded people that President Biden only won the state by 10,457 votes in the 2020 race.
On Saturday morning in Phoenix, he spoke to a group of educators out canvassing votes and reminded them that every vote counts.
‘You know the first time I voted I almost didn’t vote for my future husband. It’s true. Can you imagine if I hadn’t? I mean, thank God I did,’ he said.
she noticed she was a student at the University of Delaware at the time and Joe Biden was running for senator.
“Actually, Joe won that election by only 3,000 votes, so it could easily have been the other way around,” he said.
This is Jill Biden’s fourth time in Arizona this year, but her first appearance for Kamala Harris.
It’s been about 10 weeks since President Biden dropped out of the 2024 campaign.
At that moment, the first lady felt the the sting of the ‘betrayal’ of democrats who privately offered support to her husband and then publicly asked him to drop out of the presidential race, people close to her told DailyMail.com.
Jill Biden was at Joe Biden’s side in Wilmington, DelawareThat fateful day he made his decision and even spoke by phone with Harris to declare his support for the vice president.
“We love you,” he told Harris, a source familiar with the conversation said. She also called Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, with whom she is close.
Now, he’s making his support public with a high-profile campaign for Harris.
In addition to stops out west in Arizona and Nevada, he will focus on the “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, three states the party views as essential to Harris’ victory.
It is Jill Biden’s first return to the campaign trail since her husband Joe Biden dropped out of the race in July and comes after reports of initial tensions between the first lady and Vice President Harris.
Before President Biden resigned, Jill Biden was a high-profile Democratic surrogate for both her husband and other members of the party. In the 2022 midterm elections, more congressional and Senate candidates wanted her at their rallies than the president.
Jill Biden had been an enthusiastic supporter of her husband and regularly went out to tout his achievements to voters. She led the Women for Biden-Harris effort that led her to travel to battleground states where she praised the president and criticized Trump.
The first lady, who supported the president when he rejected party leaders to stay in the race, disappeared from the campaign spotlight after he resigned.
She spoke at the Democratic National Convention and formally endorsed Harris, but otherwise focused on Joining Forces, women’s health and her other initiatives as first lady.
President Joe Biden gives his wife Jill Biden a kiss after delivering the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in August.
Early in the administration, Jill Biden was reported to be angry with Kamala Harris over an incident in the 2020 primary debates.
Early in the Biden administration there were reports of hard feelings between Jill Biden, who is known for holding grudges, and Harris.
Biden was upset with Harris for a line of attack in one of the first primary debates, taking aim at Joe Biden for his record on school busing in the 1960s as part of desegregation efforts.
But those feelings – along with any lingering feelings of resentment over her husband’s treatment by party leaders – appear to have been pushed aside for the greater goal of winning the election.
The first lady began her campaign with two stops in Arizona, campaigning in Yuma and Phoenix.
He will be in Carson City and Reno, Nevada, on Sunday, while spending Monday in the Detroit suburbs and Madison, Wisconsin.
Their trip will conclude Tuesday with a stop in their hometown of Philadelphia.