Harris rips Trump, touts health care plan in Reno speech
RENO — California Sen. Kamala Harris tore into President Donald Trump over calling for China to investigate a political rival and touted her plan for a Medicare-for-all option as a path to reducing prescription drug prices during a campaign stop Thursday in Reno.
Talking about Trump publicly calling for China to investigate former vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter — comments similar to those at the heart of the congressional Democrats’ impeachment inquiry — the former California attorney general said that “what we’re looking at on the TV the last few days is the confession of a crime.
“He is now, yet again, publicly inviting a foreign government to interfere in an election of the president of the United States,” Harris told reporters after her speech at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Harris called for the president to give up any transcripts or notes taken during conversations with Chinese President Xi Jinping “to determine if this is a conversation that he’s had.”
During her speech Harris talked up her health care platform, which calls for Medicare to be offered as an option to all Americans but doesn’t go as far as some of her primary opponents’ plans that would end private health insurance.
“I’m not going to take away your choice. If you want to have a private plan, you can have a private plan,” Harris said.
Harris spoke to an enthusiastic crowd of about 400 who showed up to hear her stump speech inside a ballroom at UNR’s student union Thursday, with the loudest cheers coming after her jabs at Trump and comments about a woman’s right to choose and climate change.
The most recent polling of Nevada, conducted by Suffolk University in mid-September for the Reno Gazette Journal, showed Harris struggling in the Silver State. She had just 4 percent, lagging behind the trio of Biden (23 percent), Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (19 percent) and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (14 percent).
Contact Capital Bureau Chief Colton Lochhead at clochhead@reviewjournal.com or 775-461-3820. Follow @ColtonLochhead on Twitter.