Kamala Harris, in Wilmington, says as a former prosecutor she knows ‘Donald Trump’s type’

Vice President Kamala Harris wasted no time delivering a line supporters were ready for as she directly challenged former President Donald Trump during the first speech of her presidential campaign.

Harris talked about the work she’s done as California attorney general and as a prosecutor, taking on perpetrators “who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain.”

”So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type,” she said to cheers.

Trump was the first former president to be convicted of a felony after he was found guilty on 34 counts in May in his New York hush money trial.

The vice president spoke at her campaign’s Wilmington headquarters, formerly President Joe Biden’s campaign headquarters, with little more than 100 days to close the gap against Trump in Pennsylvania and other key states.

She stressed her affection and appreciation for Biden in her remarks coming a day after Biden’s withdrawal from the race, following weeks of concern from Democrats about his ability to compete with Trump.

“We love Joe and Jill, we really do,” Harris said.

”It’s mutual,” Biden, who had called in for the event, cut in. “I’m watching you, kid. I love you.”

Biden endorsed Harris to take his place at the top of the ticket and has quickly coalesced support among Democrats.

“Embrace her, she’s the best,” Biden said over the phone at the Wilmington event. “The name has changed at the top of the ticket but the mission hasn’t changed at all.”

Harris, who walked into the room to thunderous applause as “Freedom” by Beyoncé played, said in the days ahead she will do “everything in my power to unite our Democratic Party, to unite our nation and to win this election.”

She told a crowd of about 100 staffers, that she knew it had been a “roller coaster and we’re all filled with so many mixed emotions.” She said she had asked campaign managers Jen O’Malley Dillon and Julie Chávez Rodriguez to stay on and lead her campaign.

The campaign built to elect Biden will now pivot to electing Harris and confronting Trump’s Republican Party, which has been strongly unified in the wake of the assassination attempt on the former president just eight days before Biden’s withdrawal.

Republicans have already started drawing comparisons between Biden and Harris.

“It’s a whole new ballgame but the players haven’t changed much, so the game plan hasn’t changed at all,” U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser, a Trump ally said. “We’re playing our winning game.”

Harris said the election was about more than beating Trump but about drastically different visions for the country.

”One focused on the future, the other focused on the past,” Harris said. ”Donald Trump wants to take our country backward to a time before many of our fellow Americans had full freedoms and rights, but we believe in a brighter future that makes room for all Americans.”

Harris appealed to the staffers in the room to work hard in the weeks ahead, saying the baton has been passed from “framers to the abolitionists, the suffragettes to the freedom riders and the farmworkers.”

The crowd roared as she said she’d fight to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, universal background checks, and protect abortion rights.

She ended the speech by saying, “God bless you all and God Bless America and God Bless Joe Biden.”