Vice President Kamala Harris slammed former President Donald Trump on Thursday night, chiding him for calling himself “the father of IVF.”
“He refuses continuously to acknowledge the harm he has caused. See for yourself —, let’s roll a clip,” Harris said.
Then, before a crowd of more than 4,000 people in this critical battleground state, a series of video clips of Trump played on a giant screen, where he was seen praising himself for having overturned abortion-rights protections set out in Roe v. Wade.
The crowd heckled and howled at each of the segments, which ended with a Fox News town hall in which Trump took questions from women.
“It just gets more unbelievable sometimes. Now he calls himself the father of IVF? What does that even mean?” Harris said incredulously, adding, “He is the one who, by the way, is responsible for it being at risk in the first place.”
At that, several women in the crowd could be seen turning to one another, nodding and expressing agreement.
“It does get more unbelievable,” one could be heard saying.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
After the rally, the woman said Harris’ remarks resonated with her.
“I’m so tired of his lies,” she said, noting that she supported Harris’ policies. She did not want to give her name, she said, because she lives in a “divided family” — her husband supports Trump.
Rallygoer Linda Patzke of Pittsfield, Wisconsin, cited reproductive rights as one of the most motivating issues of the election, in addition to public education and the environment. Patzke, a mother of four and grandmother of seven, said she was tired of what she thought was a double standard with the government wanting to intervene in women’s health choices.
“Where does the male take the responsibility for their role?” she said. “Where is the male ever held by the same standard?”
The number of babies born using in vitro fertilization, or IVF, is growing every year in the U.S., but there are still a lot of misconceptions about what IVF actually is. Here’s what you need to know.
A senior campaign official said Harris would increasingly use her rallies as a platform to remind women that Trump’s first-term actions were responsible for abortion bans across the country. The official added that she would also highlight what the person described as Trump’s unhinged comments.
Harris has regularly polled strongest among women. In the final stretch of the race, survey after survey has shown Harris and Trump neck and neck. Wisconsin remains on the knife’s edge. A Marquette Law School Poll released Wednesday found the two in a dead heat.
Harris’ visit to Green Bay was the last of three stops in Wisconsin on Thursday, after she held events in LaCrosse and Milwaukee with billionaire businessman Mark Cuban.
In between laying out her own policy proposals, Harris hit Trump on other issues, including when he was asked at a recent town hall about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“What did Donald Trump say? He called it ‘a day of love,’” Harris said to groans. “The American people are exhausted with his gaslighting. We are ready to turn the page!”
At that, chants broke out in the crowd of “We’re not going back.”
At one point, Harris, highlighting a new policy proposal, spoke about family members who were caretakers of the elderly, underscoring that it was important they be treated with “dignity” in their later years. She specifically called out the “sandwich generation,” families stuck financially because they can’t afford home health care for their parents unless they draw down all their savings to qualify for Medicaid.
“Instead, we’re going to have Medicare cover home health care for those people,” she said.
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