Harris attacks Trump for allegedly sending Covid tests to Putin 'when Black people were dying every day by the hundreds'

Alex Seitz-Wald and Tara Prindiville and Katherine Doyle
Updated Wed, October 16, 2024 

As she steps up her appeals to Black voters, Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on a popular Black radio program Tuesday, saying she is still open to slavery reparations and slamming former President Donald Trump for allegedly sending Covid tests to Russia “when Black people were dying” back home.

In a wide-ranging live radio town hall in Detroit hosted by syndicated radio host Charlamagne Tha God, Harris faced pointed questions from the host and his guests, some of whom said they felt Black voters have been taken for granted by Democrats while getting “very little in return.”

Harris, who has been trying to stem Democrats’ small but steady erosion of support from voters of color, spoke about her upbringing in Oakland, California, in the Black church and at Howard University, but said she knew she had to “earn every vote.”

While she often tells supporters on the campaign trail that she is the underdog, she said Tuesday: "I’m going to win, but it’s tight.”

Vice President Kamala Harris prepares for a live iHeartRadio interview with US radio host Charlamagne tha God in Detroit, on Oct. 15, 2024.

Harris opened a new line of attack on Trump, connecting his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, an issue that has been seen mainly as of concern to educated white progressives, to the well-being of Black Americans.

Drawing on a new book by famed journalist Bob Woodward, Harris slammed Trump for reportedly sending Covid-19 testing devices to Putin when the machines were in short supply back home. NBC News has not been able to independently verify the report.

She said Trump is someone who “admire[s] dictators” and, during the height of the pandemic, sent “Covid tests that nobody could get to the president of Russia for his personal use, when Black people were dying every day by the hundreds.”

“The number of people who lost their grandparents and parents, remember what that was like?” she continued. “People were scrambling for the resources and needed tests, and Donald Trump secretly sent Covid tests to the president of Russia.”

She tried to belittle Trump — which could be an attempt to take away some of the bravado that has appealed to male voters as she has focused particularly on Black men.

"The man is really quite weak. He’s weak," she said. "It’s a sign of weakness that you want to please dictators and seek their flattery and favor. It’s a sign of weakness that you would demean America’s military and America’s service members. It’s a sign of weakness that you don’t have the courage to stand up for the Constitution of the United States and the principles upon which it stands. This man is weak, and he is unfit."

She also suggested she's OK with people saying Trump supports fascism.

"Donald Trump is about taking us backward," Harris said.

"The other is about fascism," Charlamagne interjected. "Why can’t we just say it?"

“Yes, we can say that,” she said with a laugh.

Harris also stood by her early support for studying the idea of slavery reparations, which she embraced during her first presidential run in 2019.

During that campaign, she adopted a number of progressive positions from which she has since distanced herself.

But when she was asked directly Tuesday, Harris responded: “On the point of reparations, it has to be studied. There’s no question about that.”

As a senator, Harris backed a bill that would have created a federal commission to study the policy and develop reparations proposals.

“I am running to be president for everybody, but I’m clear-eyed about the history and the disparities that exist for specific communities, and I’m not going to shy away from that,” she said.

Asked about her time as a prosecutor and criticism that she worked to imprison Black men on drug charges, Harris defended her record, saying she did not seek jail time for offenders who were charged only with possession of marijuana.

“I will work on decriminalizing it, because I know exactly how those laws have been used to disproportionately impact certain populations, and specifically Black men,” she said about working to change the laws around marijuana.

Trump's campaign responded to the attacks in the interview by pointing to polls that find a majority of Black voters think the country is on the wrong track.

“During the interview, she proposed imposing reparations which could cost the US $10 trillion to $12 trillion," Janiyah Thomas, Trump's Black media director, said in a statement. "In Kamala’s America, Black Americans know that we come last — after illegal immigrants, the war in Ukraine and now in the Middle East.”

Harris has a long but not always eye-to-eye relationship with Charlamagne, whose real name is Lenard McKelvey, a prominent figure in his own right who appeared with her on the campaign trail in 2019 but has also criticized her at times and has not been afraid to press her in interviews.

He did not ask her about a recent moment of friction over trans issues that ended up circulating widely in pro-Trump circles.

“When you hear the narrator [of a Trump ad] say Kamala supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners, that one line, I was like, ‘Hell no, I don’t want my taxpayer dollars going to that.’ That ad was effective,” he said last month.

The ad refers to a position Harris took in 2019 when she told the American Civil Liberties Union that she supported gender-affirming care for prisoners and people in immigration detention facilities. Her campaign has backed off that position.

In the interview, Harris also defended herself from criticism that she can be cautious in the way she speaks, sticking to talking points and repeating herself often in interviews and speeches.

Asked what she says to critics who say she sticks to talking points, Harris replied, “I’d say, ‘You’re welcome.’”

She went on to say that repetition is necessary to reach distracted voters who do not already know about her and that her approach shows “discipline.”

Both the Trump and Harris campaigns shared a clip of the moment on X, suggesting both apparently viewed it as proving their points.

On a lighter note, Harris said she approved of Maya Rudolph’s impression of her on “Saturday Night Live,” even though some pro-Harris voices, like radio host Howard Stern, say they do not like seeing people make fun of her.

“I have nothing but admiration for the comedy,” she said.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com