US Vice President Kamala Harris has released her first campaign ad as a likely presidential candidate under the slogan “We choose freedom”. The short video, which was shared online on Thursday, is accompanied by the song “Freedom” by US pop diva Beyoncé. The video contains attacks on the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Harris had received permission from Beyoncé to use her hit after President Joe Biden announced on Sunday that he would not run for re-election and instead endorsed his deputy as the new Democratic Party presidential candidate.
The ad features Harris supporters of different generations and ethnicities. The Vice President begins by saying: “In this election, each of us is faced with a question: What kind of country do we want to live in? There are some people who think we should live in a country of chaos, fear, hate” – along with images of Trump and his vice presidential candidate JD Vance.
Harris then continues: “But we – we choose something different. We choose freedom.” The Vice President then calls, among other things, for “the freedom to be safe from gun violence” and – referring to abortion rights – the freedom to make decisions “about your own body.”
In the ad, the 59-year-old also advocates for a future without children in poverty, with universal health insurance – and in which “no one is above the law”. In doing so, she again refers to Trump, whose famous police photo is shown.
Harris, who was previously Attorney General of the State of California, is making it clear that she will make Trump’s legal entanglements a central theme of her campaign. Since he was found guilty by a New York jury at the end of May of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to former porn actress Stormy Daniels, Trump is the first former US president in history to be convicted of a criminal offense.
Harris has not yet been nominated as the Democratic candidate for the presidential election in November. However, she says she has already secured the sufficient number of delegate votes. There are currently no other candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The Democratic Party headquarters decided on Wednesday to have the presidential candidate chosen by electronic voting at the beginning of August and not at the party convention from August 19 to 22.
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