Wilmington, Del. — In case you missed it, last night, Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester joined CNN’s AC360 to discuss the stakes of the 2024 election on the eve of Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate announcement. The Congresswoman — who was one of four people on the 2020 Vice President selection committee that eventually tapped Kamala Harris, and who now serves as national co chair for Harris’s 2024 bid — also spoke to John Berman about Donald Trump’s vice president pick flop and the former President’s continued attacks on Kamala Harris’s identity.
Watch the full interview here.
On the qualities that led Joe Biden to select Kamala Harris as his running mate and governing partner:
“I had the opportunity and the great privilege of serving as one of the four members of the VP selection committee. And for Joe Biden, he was very clear. He wanted someone who was qualified. He wanted someone who would be ready on day one, and Kamala Harris fit that bill. She was ready on day one then, and she’s even more ready today.
“And he also wanted someone […] who was, in his words, simpatico with him. [… That] they worked well together, and, at the end of the day, when the lights are about to go off and they’re leaving the White House, this is the last person in the room that he talks to and gets advice [from…]. Kamala Harris fit that bill, and I know that she is looking for someone who will do the same thing — that will be simpatico with her.”
On Donald Trump’s inability to defend his vice presidential pick in the wake of JD Vance’s disastrous launch, and what it says about the former President’s judgment:
“It’s unfortunate that President Trump couldn’t even say that his own vice presidential pick would be ready on day one […].
“We happen to believe it is an important decision. One of the first, and biggest, decisions that you will make as a candidate — and it shows who you are as a president.”
On her reaction to Donald Trump’s continued attacks on the Vice President’s biracial heritage:
“Someone said to me, Lisa, why aren’t you so horrified, upset? And maybe because I wasn’t surprised. You can either look at it as political — that this is birtherism 2.0; and this is what you do when you’re trying to distract because you don’t have a good track record, you don’t have good policies for the future, because you’re thinking of Project 2025, and gutting Social Security and Medicare, and taking away a woman’s right to to have bodily autonomy — or maybe it’s personal. It’s really who he is. In either of those events, it makes clear to the American people why he should not be on the ticket or back in the White House.”
On the stakes of the race for the White House:
“This race is not just the most important [of our lifetime], it is the most consequential. The decision of who we put into the White House will have consequences for the next not just decades, but possibly generations — for our climate, for jobs, for all of it. And so we’re telling […] everybody, we got to do our part.
“We’re moving from worrying about all of this to work. We got to work — so that we can win. That’s our goal.”