Kamala Harris baits Trump on his health records after releasing her own

Harris' line of attack followed the release of a detailed report by her physician that said 59-year-old Democratic nominee is in excellent health

By Jennifer Epstein

Vice President Kamala Harris needled her Republican opponent Donald Trump for keeping his medical records out of public view, saying he isn’t being transparent with American voters.

Harris’ line of attack on Sunday followed the release of a detailed report by her physician that said the 59-year-old Democratic nominee is in “excellent health.” She portrayed Trump as ducking an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes and a second presidential debate with her, then sought to suggest his campaign might have something to hide.

“One must question: Are they afraid that people will see that he is too weak and unstable to lead America?” Harris said to cheers from a university auditorium crowd of about 7,000 at Greenville, North Carolina. 

While Trump, 78, told CBS News in August he would “very gladly” release his medical records, he has declined media requests to do so.

After the statement by Harris’ doctor on Saturday, the Trump campaign said the former president has released health updates from his personal doctor and from former White House physician Ronny Jackson, now a Texas Republican congressman, after the assassination attempt on Trump in July. 

“All have concluded he is in perfect and excellent health to be commander in chief,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that Trump’s medical records are “irrelevant,” claiming that Americans care about the cost of living, not “the cholesterol level of Donald Trump.”

At a Black church in Greenville earlier Sunday, Harris also took a swipe at Trump for spreading false claims about the disaster response to Hurricane Helene for political gain ahead of Election Day on Nov. 5. 

“I’m speaking of those who are literally not telling the truth, lying about people who are working hard to help the folks in need,” Harris said, without mentioning Trump by name. “Frankly, the motives are quite transparent — to gain some advantage for themselves, to play politics with other people’s heartbreak.” 

Since the storm hit parts of North Carolina and a similarly Republican-heavy part of Georgia, Trump has kept up a steady stream of criticism and false claims about the federal disaster response, including that storm victims can only receive $750 in aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

President Joe Biden and Harris have debunked his statements and chastised him for trying to turn the disaster response into campaign fodder.  

While no Democratic presidential nominee has won North Carolina since 2008, the Harris campaign sees the state’s 16 electoral votes as within reach after Biden dropped out of the race.  

Greenville, in Pitt County, is hundreds of miles east of the storm-devastated western side of the state, a fact Harris acknowledged on Sunday. It’s the kind of region where the Harris campaign hopes to expand its edge over Trump. Slightly more than a third of the county’s population was Black as of the 2020 Census.

Trump won North Carolina by 1.3 percentage points in 2020, the narrowest victory of any presidential candidate in the state’s history. Exit polls found that nearly a quarter of the voters were Black and 92% of them reported voting for the Democratic ticket.

Trump won nearly all the counties of western North Carolina in 2016 and 2020, and state Republicans who typically aren’t interested in making it easier to vote are concerned that Helene’s aftermath could make it more difficult for voters to cast their ballots. 

Last week Harris visited Charlotte for a briefing on the disaster response and to distribute supplies at a volunteer center. 

Her campaign and the coordinated state Democratic Party have paused routine organizing in western North Carolina and are instead helping with relief efforts, including transporting water and other necessities from neighboring states, a campaign official said, while their voter protection team is working to ensure that eligible voters are able to cast their ballots.