Harris to slam................

Kamala Harris to slam Trump in prebuttal to final night of Republican convention

By Dan Merica and MJ Lee

Joe Biden's presidential campaign is countering the final night of President Donald Trump's convention with a series of prebuttals, including a speech by vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris and a blistering new ad set to run before the President accepts his party's renomination.

Harris is expected to lambast Trump in a speech from Washington, DC, on Thursday, as well as address the police shooting of Jacob Blake and subsequent unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a campaign aide told CNN.

The Biden campaign will air a new two-minute ad on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News ahead of the convention. The ad is primarily a positive spot focused on Biden's biography, but it also jabs Trump's fitness for the job and handling of key issues.

"Some people are always in a hurry. They run when they could walk. Race up steps when others take it slow," a narrator says at the start of the ad as images of Biden running and biking are paired with viral video of Trump cautiously walking down a ramp earlier this year at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

The ad then pivots to Biden's biography, including the tragedy that has defined his life, and features Biden touting the country's ability to overcome this moment.

"America is an idea, an idea stronger than any army more powerful than any dictator or tyrant," Biden says in the ad. "And it's an idea as alive and powerful today as it was when it was first proposed."

The ad is part of the $26 million the campaign plans to spend on digital and television ads around the Republican convention.

Trump will accept his party's nomination with a speech on the South Lawn of the White House on Thursday night. The speech will mark the end to the Republican convention, a four-night event where the party sought to present a softer, gentler version of the President while reinventing his own record on everything from the coronavirus to the economy to immigration.

"At no time before have voters faced a clearer choice between two parties, two visions, two philosophies, or two agendas," Trump is expected to say, according to excerpts of Trump's speech provided to CNN. "We have spent the last four years reversing the damage Joe Biden inflicted over the last 47 years. At the Democrat convention, you barely heard a word about their agenda. But that's not because they don't have one. It's because their agenda is the most extreme set of proposals ever put forward by a major party nominee."

Almost all of the Republican speakers have also criticized the Biden-Harris administration, casting it as radical and out-of-touch with America.

But Biden's campaign has also sought to signal discord among Republican ranks during the GOP convention, touting the endorsement of hundreds of staffers who worked for the last three Republican presidential nominees -- Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, the late Arizona Sen. John McCain and former President George W. Bush. Trump, however, remains overwhelming popular among Republican voters.

All of this is playing out as the latest instance of racial turmoil, this time in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after a police officer shot Blake.

The tumult continued later in the week, when two people were shot and killed during a night of unrest. Police arrested Illinois teen Kyle Rittenhouse Wednesday and charged him with first-degree intentional homicide.

Trump has yet to comment on the Blake shooting, but Biden and Harris have talked with the Blake family and the California senator commented on the unrest during a virtual campaign event on Wednesday.

"It's just the most recent tragic example of what we also need to focus on around reforming the criminal justice system and policing in America," said Harris. "What happened there is so tragic and still represents the two systems of justice in America, there are still two systems of justice in America and we, we need to fight again for that idea that says all people are supposed to be treated equally, which is still not happening."