New Delhi:

After Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 US Presidential elections, social media has been abuzz with rumours that his health is deteriorating which is why he’s been avoiding the public eye.

“Where’s Joe” is among the top trends on X (formerly Twitter) globally with people wondering why the US President hasn’t made a public appearance in the last five days. The truth: Biden has tested positive for Covid and is isolating, the White House said in a statement last week.

But that hasn’t stopped social media users from coming up with theories about the 81-year-old. Several posts claiming that “Joe Biden is in hospice care and unlikely to survive the night” have gone viral on the social platform.

Another theory was floated by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance. The two leaders hit out at the Democratic party for a “coup” against President Biden to push him out of the race.

When asked if Biden’s dropping out of the election was a “coup against Joe Biden,” Donald Trump said “Sort of,” before Vance jumped in.

“Yeah, I think it is. I mean, look, there’s a constitutional process, the 25th Amendment. If Joe Biden can’t run for president, he can’t serve as president,” Vance said in an interview with Fox News.

Biden’s decision came after internal pressure by the Democratic Party mounted following a widely criticised debate against Trump on June 27. Vice-President Kamala Harris has won the support of the party’s lawmakers to take Biden’s place in the Presidential elections.

Joe Biden, after his shock announcement Sunday that he was dropping out of the race to the White House, urged his fellow Democrats on Monday to rally around Harris’ candidacy.

“She’s the best,” he said, his voice still hoarse from Covid.

Harris has less than four months to convince the American public she has what it takes for highest office.

Donald Trump was in the lead in polls in the state against Joe Biden, but it is still too early to know whether he will maintain that lead against Kamala Harris.

New Delhi:

More than 44,000 people, led by black women, logged onto a Zoom call to support US Vice President Kamala Harris and raised more than $1.5 million for her campaign in three hours as she aims for the Oval Office in the west wing of the White House, the Washington Post reported. The presidential bid could make Ms Harris the first woman president of the United States. 

Ms Harris today expressed her gratitude for the “overwhelming support” and reaffirmed her commitment to the Democratic presidential nomination, just two days after President Joe Biden, who was seeking re-election, announced his decision to step aside. “When I announced my campaign for President, I said I intended to go out and earn this nomination. Tonight, I am proud to have secured the broad support needed to become our party’s nominee, and as a daughter of California, I am proud that my home state’s delegation helped put our campaign over the top. I look forward to formally accepting the nomination soon,” she said in a statement.

Tonight, I am proud to have earned the support needed to become our party’s nominee.

Over the next few months, I’ll be traveling across the country talking to Americans about everything on the line. I fully intend to unite our party and our nation, and defeat Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/Bsq3N6pMAi

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) July 23, 2024

Jotaka Eaddy, founder of ‘Win With Black Women’, which describes itself as a collective of intergenerational, intersectional Black women leaders, said, “Anybody that does not think that Black and Brown women are the backbone of this party (Democratic), they don’t know us.” 

Black women are a key Democratic voting bloc. The call, which attracted several celebrities and political figures, was conducted off the record, with participants speaking in their personal capacities. Attendees described it as feeling like church or a family reunion.

Ms Eaddy has been organising such calls since August 2020. Her organisation aims to elect Black women nationwide and speaks out against racism and sexism. During the 2020 election, the most attendees she had on one Zoom call was 1,500 people but Sunday’s call saw more than 40,000 attending. 

But the large volume of people posed its own challenges for Zoom. The video communications platform has a 1,000-person capacity. When that limit was reached, members of Ms Eaddy’s organisation contacted Zoom which upgraded the group to a webinar format, allowing unlimited attendees. “I am forever grateful to the leadership of Zoom for what they did,” Ms Eaddy said.

“What happened last night was historic,” Ms Eaddy added. “It really is the culmination of so many Black women for years and years and years that have been working, cultivating and creating for this moment. And last night was also a homage, a work to them and their sacrifice.”

Notable speakers included Bernice King, the youngest child of Martin Luther King Jr and 85-year-old Democratic Senator Maxine Waters, the most senior Black woman in the US House.

Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the U.S. presidential race injects greater uncertainty into the world at a time when Western leaders are grappling with wars in Ukraine and Gaza, a more assertive China in Asia and the rise of the far-right in Europe.

During a five-decade career in politics, Mr. Biden developed extensive personal relationships with multiple foreign leaders that none of the potential replacements on the Democratic ticket can match. After his announcement, messages of support and gratitude for his years of service poured in from near and far.

The scope of foreign policy challenges facing the next U.S. President makes clear how consequential what happens in Washington is for the rest of the planet. Here’s a look at some of them.

With Vice President Kamala Harris being eyed as a potential replacement for Mr. Biden, Israelis on Sunday scrambled to understand what her candidacy would mean for their country as it confronts increasing global isolation over its military campaign against Hamas.

ALSO READ | What happens next as Joe Biden seeks to pass baton to Kamala Harris?

Israel’s left-wing Haaretz daily newspaper ran a story scrutinising Ms. Harris’s record of support for Israel, pointing to her reputation as Mr. Biden’s “bad cop” who has vocally admonished Israel for its war on Gaza. In recent months, she has gone further than Mr. Biden in calling for a ceasefire, denouncing Israel’s invasion of Rafah and expressing horror over the civilian death toll in Gaza.

“With Biden leaving, Israel has lost perhaps the last Zionist President,” said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli Consul General in New York. “A new Democratic candidate will upend the dynamic.”

ALSO READ | Trump season: Editorial on the 2024 U.S. Presidential election

Mr. Biden’s staunch defence of Israel since Hamas’s October 7 attack has its roots in his half-century of support for the country as a Senator, Vice President, and then President. Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant thanked Mr. Biden for his “unwavering support of Israel over the years.” “Your steadfast backing, especially during the war, has been invaluable,” Mr. Gallant wrote on social media platform X.

‘Unbreakable bond’

Israeli President Isaac Herzog praised Mr. Biden as a “symbol of the unbreakable bond between our two peoples” and a “true ally of the Jewish people.” There was no immediate reaction from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an ally of former President Donald Trump whose history of cordial relations with Mr. Biden has come under strain during the Israel-Hamas war.

Any Democratic candidate would likely continue Mr. Biden’s legacy of staunch military support for Ukraine. But frustration with the Biden administration has grown in Ukraine and Europe over the slow pace of U.S. aid and restrictions on the use of Western weapons.

“Most Europeans realise that Ukraine is increasingly going to be their burden,” said Sudha David-Wilp, director of the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund, a research institute. “Everyone is trying to get ready for all the possible outcomes.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on X that he respected the “tough but strong decision” by Mr. Biden to drop out of the campaign, and he thanked Mr. Biden for his help “in preventing (Russian President Vladimir) Putin from occupying our country.”

Mr. Trump has promised to end Russia’s war on Ukraine in one day if he is elected — a prospect that has raised fears in Ukraine that Russia might be allowed to keep the territory it occupies. Mr. Trump’s vice presidential pick, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, is among Congress’s most vocal opponents of U.S. aid for Ukraine and has further raised the stakes for Kyiv.

Russia, meanwhile, dismissed the importance of the race, insisting that no matter what happened, Moscow would press on in Ukraine.

“That is it for Biden,” Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security council, said on the Telegram messaging app. “The goals of the special military operation will be achieved,” he added, using the Kremlin’s term for the war in Ukraine.

In recent months, both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump have tried to show voters who can best stand up to Beijing’s growing military strength and belligerence and protect U.S. businesses and workers from low-priced Chinese imports. Mr. Biden has hiked tariffs on electric vehicles from China, and Mr. Trump has promised to implement tariffs of 60% on all Chinese products.

Mr. Trump’s “America First” doctrine exacerbated tensions with Beijing. But disputes with the geopolitical rival and economic colossus over wars, trade, technology and security continued into Mr. Biden’s term.

China’s official reaction to the U.S. presidential race has been careful.

“The U.S. elections are U.S. internal politics. I have no comment on this,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning.

The editor of the Communist Party-run Global Times newspaper, Hu Xijin, downplayed the impact of Mr. Biden’s withdrawal. “Whoever becomes the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party may be the same,” he wrote on X.

Many Europeans were happy to see Mr. Trump go after his years of disparaging the European Union and undermining NATO. Mr. Trump’s seemingly dismissive attitude toward European allies in last month’s presidential debate did nothing to assuage those concerns. Mr. Biden, on the other hand, has supported close American relations with bloc leaders.

That closeness was on stark display after Mr. Biden’s decision to bow out of the race. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called his choice “probably the most difficult one in your life.” The newly installed British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, said he respected Biden’s “decision based on what he believes is in the best interests of the American people.”

Washington:

Republican leader Vivek Ramaswamy, who had predicted President Joe Biden would not be the Democratic presidential nominee for the November election, has said the country is not running against a candidate but an unelected managerial class machine.

The Indian-American businessman-turned-politician said on Monday that the speed at which the ruling Democratic Party moved to replace incumbent President Joe Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris as a possible candidate for the November 5 polls raises lots of questions.

“We’re not actually running against a candidate here. We’re running against a machine. That’s a deep understanding of what’s going on that requires rejecting some of the things you might otherwise think,” Ramaswamy said in a 15-minute long video posted on various social media platforms.

During the Republican presidential debate last November, Ramaswamy, 38, had predicted that Biden would not be the Democratic presidential nominee, a claim dismissed as a ‘conspiracy theory’ by much of the mainstream media at that time.

On Sunday, Biden shocked the nation by announcing that he is backing out of the presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, who, as of now, is the only Democratic Party leader in the race.

“It’s not Biden that we were up against at all. His cognitive deficits, and I would argue Kamala Harris’s cognitive deficits, they’re not a bug to the people who control them. Those cognitive deficits are a feature. It is a wheel of the managerial class crushing the will of everyday citizens, not just in the Republican Party, but even in the Democratic Party,” he said.

He said that the Democrats may not agree with everything that Donald Trump or the Republican Party says today, and that’s fine. No two Americans agree on 100 per cent of policies. That’s a rarity, Ramaswamy, who in January suspended his Republican presidential campaign and endorsed former president Donald Trump, said.

But you do deserve a president and a party that at least tells you the truth, not just when it’s easy, but when it’s hard and when it’s uncomfortable, he said.

“Beyond just this individual game, whether it’s Joe or whether it’s Kamala, we got to realise the thing that we’re actually solving for is defeating that machine, the rise of that managerial class, bigger than any other individual, it embodies the philosophy of what the modern left is really about,” he said in the video that went viral on social media.

“It’s not about individual agency. It’s that collective will. That’s what this machine really is about…. That’s really what we’re running against. That’s what we’re running to defeat. That’s the system we’re running to break. That’s what the deep state is really about,” Ramaswamy said.

“This is about the unelected managerial, you could call them elites, you could call them bureaucrats, you could call them monarchs, who have no accountability to the people, but whose decisions are actually most impactful on how citizens live their lives,” he said and urged the Democrats to put their best possible nominee for the elections.

Ramaswamy alleged that this is a party and a movement on the Democrat side that has made it its core reason for existence to keep former president Trump out of office. “They’ve tried every way to stop him within the legal system and extra-legally as well.” But all their efforts to keep him from the ballot have not just failed but backfired making Trump and the Republican Party more popular, he added.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

US Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday said she has earned the support needed to become the Democrat presidential nominee, two days after Joe Biden, who was seeking re-election, announced to bow down.

“When I announced my campaign for President, I said I intended to go out and earn this nomination. Tonight, I am proud to have secured the broad support needed to become our party’s nominee, and as a daughter of California, I am proud that my home state’s delegation helped put our campaign over the top. I look forward to formally accepting the nomination soon,” she said in a statement. 

Joe Biden, who was seeking a rematch against Republican candidate Donald Trump in the November 5 US elections, announced to step aside on Sunday.

The 81-year-old ended the re-election bid amid mounting pressure over his health concerns and pledged to remain in office until his term ends in January 2025. He has now thrown his support behind 59-year-old Harris.

“I am grateful to President Biden and everyone in the Democratic Party who has already put their faith in me, and I look forward to taking our case directly to the American people,” Kamala Harris, the first Black American and first Indian-American to be elected vice president, said.

Tonight, I am proud to have earned the support needed to become our party’s nominee.

Over the next few months, I’ll be traveling across the country talking to Americans about everything on the line. I fully intend to unite our party and our nation, and defeat Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/Bsq3N6pMAi

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) July 23, 2024

“This election will present a clear choice between two different visions. Donald Trump wants to take our country back to a time before many of us had full freedoms and equal rights. I believe in a future that strengthens our democracy, protects reproductive freedom, and ensures every person has the opportunity to not just get by, but to get ahead,” Harris said.

“I fully intend to unite our party, unite our nation, and defeat Donald Trump in November,” she added.

An unofficial survey of delegates by the news agency Associated Press showed Kamala Harris with more than 2,500 delegates, well over the 1,976 needed to win a vote in the coming weeks. 

Democratic party is scheduled to announce the presidential nominee by August 7.

Replacing Biden atop the ticket has also revved up speculation about who might join Harris as a vice presidential candidate.

According to reports, the people being discussed are Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

(With agency inputs)

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris has secured the support of enough Democratic delegates to become her party’s nominee against former President and Republican nominee Donald Trump, according to an Associated Press survey, as top Democrats rallied to her in the aftermath of U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to drop his bid for re-election.

The quick coalescing behind Ms. Harris marked an attempt by the party to put weeks of drama over Mr. Biden’s political future behind them and to unify behind the task of defeating Mr. Trump with just over 100 days until Election Day.

Delegations pledge support for Kamala Harris

Prominent Democratic elected officials, party leaders and political organisations quickly lined up behind Ms. Harris and her campaign set a new 24-hour record for presidential donations on Monday.

Several State delegations met on July 22 to confirm their support for Ms. Harris, including Texas and her home State of California. By Monday night, she had the support of at least 2,471 delegates, according to the AP tally of delegates, more than the 1,976 delegates she’ll need to win on a first ballot. No other candidate was named by a delegate contacted by the AP.

California state Democratic Chairman Rusty Hicks said 75% to 80% of the state’s delegation were on a call Tuesday and they unanimously supported Ms. Harris. “I’ve not heard anyone mentioning or calling for any other candidate,” Hicks said. “Tonight’s vote was a momentous one.”

Ms. Harris has also secured endorsements from several leaders, including from Govs. Wes Moore of Maryland, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Andy Beshear of Kentucky, on June 22, thus shrinking the list of potential rivals. House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, who had been one of the notable holdouts, said she was lending her “enthusiastic support” to Ms. Harris’ effort to lead the party.

Still, the AP is not calling Harris the new presumptive nominee. That’s because the convention delegates are still free to vote for the candidate of their choice at the convention in August or if Democrats go through with a virtual roll call ahead of that gathering in Chicago.

The AP tally is based on interviews with individual delegates, public statements from state parties, many of which have announced that their delegations are supporting Ms. Harris en masse, and public statements and endorsements from individual delegates.

‘Fight for the future’

Worries over Mr. Biden’s fitness for office were replaced by fresh signs of unity after a seismic shift to the presidential contest that upended both major political parties’ carefully honed plans for the 2024 race.

Speaking to campaign staff in Wilmington, Delaware, Ms. Harris acknowledged the “rollercoaster” of the last several weeks, but expressed confidence in her new campaign team. “It is my intention to go out and earn this nomination and to win,” she said. She promised to “unite our Democratic Party, to unite our nation, and to win this election.”

Ms. Harris quickly leaned into the themes that will be prominent in her campaign against Mr. Trump over the coming 100 days, contrasting her time as a prosecutor with Mr. Trump’s felony convictions — “I know Donald Trump’s type,” she said — and casting herself as a defender of economic opportunity and abortion access. “Our fight for the future is also a fight for freedoms,” she said. “The baton is in our hands.”

Mr. Biden called into the meeting from his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where he is recovering from Covid-19, to lend his support to Ms. Harris. He planned to talk about his decision to step aside in an address to the nation later this week.

“The name has changed at the top of the ticket, but the mission hasn’t changed at all,” Mr. Biden said in his first public remarks since announcing his decision to step aside, promising he was “not going anywhere” and plans to campaign on Ms. Harris’ behalf. “It was the right thing to do,” he added.

As he handed off the mantle of leadership to Ms. Harris, Mr. Biden added: “I’m watching you kid. I love you.”

Ms. Harris was headed to the battleground state of Wisconsin on July 23 as her campaign for the White House kicks into high gear. The event in Milwaukee will be her first full-fledged campaign event since announcing her candidacy.

Locking up the nomination is only the first item on Ms. Harris’ to-do list — she must also pick a running mate and pivot a massive political operation that had been built to re-elect Mr. Biden to boost her candidacy instead.

Inheriting Biden’s legacy

Mr. Biden’s campaign formally changed its name to ‘Harris for President’ on June 21, reflecting that Ms. Harris is inheriting his political operation of more than 1,000 staffers and war chest that stood at nearly $96 million at the end of June. She added $81 million to that total in the first 24 hours after Biden’s endorsement, her campaign said — a presidential fundraising record — with contributions from more than 888,000 donors.

The campaign also saw a surge of interest after Ms. Harris took over, with more than 28,000 new volunteers registered since the announcement — a rate more than 100 times an average day from the previous Biden re-election campaign.

Ms. Harris, if elected, would be the first woman and first person of South Asian descent to be president.

The Democratic National Convention is scheduled to be held Aug. 19-22 in Chicago, but the party had announced it would hold a virtual roll call to formally nominate Biden before in-person proceedings begin. The convention’s rules committee is scheduled to meet this week to finalize its nomination process with a virtual vote as soon as Aug. 1, the party announced on Monday, with the process completed by Aug. 7.

“We can and will be both fast and fair as we execute this nomination,” Jaime Harrison, the Democratic National Committee’s chair, said on a conference call with reporters.

The party said the virtual roll call would feature multiple rounds of voting on nominees if multiple candidates meet the qualification threshold. To qualify, candidates must have the electronic signatures of 300 convention delegates.

Wilmington, Delaware:

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, building Democratic backing for her sudden presidential run, rallied supporters on Monday with a debut campaign speech vowing to go after Republican nominee Donald Trump like the courtroom prosecutor she once was.

“I took on perpetrators of all kinds. Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain,” Harris told campaign workers 28 hours after President Joe Biden, 81, abandoned the 2024 White House race and endorsed her.

“So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type. In this campaign, I will proudly, I will proudly put my record against his,” said Harris, who was attorney general of California and a U.S. senator before serving as Biden’s vice president.

The Trump campaign responded to Harris’ comments. “Kamala Harris is just as incompetent as Joe Biden and even more liberal,” said Karoline Leavitt, the campaign’s national press secretary. “Not only does Kamala need to defend her support of Joe Biden’s failed agenda over the past four years, she also needs to answer for her own terrible weak-on-crime record in California.”

Trump is due to be sentenced in September after having been found guilty of falsifying business records to hide hush money payments to a porn star. He also faces criminal charges related to his efforts to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory. He falsely claims he lost in 2020 because of election fraud.

Biden, who pulled out of the race on Sunday amid questions about his age and health, called into Harris’ campaign event. Recovering from COVID-19 at his home in Delaware, he sounded hoarse but appreciative of his vice president.

Biden said he thought he had made the right decision by dropping out. Biden, the oldest person ever to occupy the Oval Office, said on Sunday he would remain in the presidency until his term ends on Jan. 20, 2025.

Harris, 59, outlined a series of policies she promised to pursue including signing laws to protect abortion rights and ban assault rifles and said she would make rebuilding the middle class the focus of her presidency.

Within minutes of receiving Biden’s backing on Sunday, Harris began consolidating Democratic support for her presidential bid, securing commitments from hundreds of convention delegates, announcing a massive fundraising haul and earning endorsements from top party figures.

These included former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has remained influential since stepping down as the party’s House of Representatives leader in 2022. The AFL-CIO labour union federation, which represents 12.5 million workers, said on Monday it had also endorsed Harris for president.

The Harris campaign aims to secure commitments from a majority of the nearly 4,000 Democratic delegates to next month’s Democratic Party convention by Wednesday evening, sources told Reuters, effectively wrapping up the nomination.

Campaign officials and allies have made hundreds of calls urging delegates to nominate Harris for president in the Nov. 5 election.

Harris’ campaign said it raised $81 million in the 24 hours following Biden’s exit, the most for a single day in the 2024 campaign for either party.

Virtually all of the prominent Democrats who had been seen as potential challengers to Harris have declared support for her, including Governors Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Gavin Newsom of California and Andy Beshear of Kentucky. Whitmer, in a post on X, on Monday said she would serve as co-chair of Harris’ campaign.

Biden’s departure was the latest shock to a White House race that included his disastrous June 27 debate performance against former President Trump and the July 13 near-assassination of Trump by a gunman during a campaign stop.

Harris lauded Biden for his service to the country. At a White House event to honour college athletes earlier on Monday, she said: “Joe Biden’s legacy over the last three years is unmatched in modern history.”

Harris will travel on Tuesday to Milwaukee, the largest city in the battleground state of Wisconsin, which last week hosted a Republican National Convention that offered a stark display of Trump’s dominance over his party.

NEW GENERATION

Harris, who is Black and Asian American, would fashion an entirely new dynamic with Trump, 78, offering a vivid generational and cultural contrast.

The Trump campaign has been preparing for her possible rise for weeks, sources told Reuters. It sent out a detailed critique of her record on immigration and other issues on Monday, accusing her of being more liberal than Biden.

It alleged that Harris favoured abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and decriminalizing border crossings, backed the so-called Green New Deal, supported the administration’s electric vehicle mandates and encouraged “defund the police” efforts.

Some of those were positions Harris adopted as an unsuccessful presidential candidate in the 2020 election when she was running on a more liberal agenda than Biden but were not ones that the administration assumed, particularly with regard to border security and law enforcement issues.

Eric Holder, who was U.S. attorney general in the administration of President Barack Obama, and his law firm Covington & Burling LLP will conduct the vetting of Harris’ potential running mates, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Trump, whose false claims that his 2020 loss to Biden was the result of fraud inspired the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, on Monday, questioned Democrats’ right to change candidates.

“They stole the race from Biden after he won it in the primaries,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.

At a rally for Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, on Monday, Ohio state Senator George Lang called for civil war to save the country if Trump didn’t win the November election. Lang later said on X that he regretted the remarks. “We should all be mindful of what is said at political events, myself included,” he wrote.

Harris is expected to stick largely to Biden’s foreign policy playbook on such issues as China, Iran and Ukraine, but could strike a tougher tone with Israel over the Gaza war if she wins the November election.

Some Democrats were concerned about the country’s long history of racial and gender discrimination. The U.S. has not elected a woman president in its nearly 250-year history.

Most public opinion polls conducted before Biden dropped out did not find that Harris performed better statistically against Trump than Biden had.

Biden has not been seen in public since testing positive for COVID on Wednesday. He tentatively plans to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday if he has recovered.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Washington:

US President Joe Biden urged his supporters on Monday to embrace Vice President Kamala Harris, saying his decision to drop out of the White House race was the “right thing” to have done.

“I want to say to the team, embrace her. She’s the best,” Biden, phoning in from his beach home, told staff at his campaign headquarters, which has transitioned to supporting Harris.

“I know yesterday’s news is surprising and it’s hard for you to hear, but it was the right thing to do,” he said of his decision to drop out.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Washington:

Kamala Harris is not yet the Democratic Party’s candidate for president but her status online is already clear: she is a meme.

In the latest testament to her viral presence among Gen Z, British pop sensation Charli XCX name-checked her in a weekend tweet that called the vice president a “brat”.

 And Harris’ campaign is leaning into it.

Soon after the artist tweeted “kamala IS brat” on Sunday night – giving Harris the name of her latest album – the U.S. vice president adopted the album’s lime green aesthetic for her “Kamala HQ” account.

Charli XCX was acknowledging something that had already taken off online, where viral memes were featuring video clips of Harris dancing and joking against Charli XCX tracks.

Brat, the singer has explained, is “that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and like maybe says some like dumb things sometimes, who like feels herself but then also like maybe has a breakdown… It’s brat, you’re brat, that’s brat.”

Her tweet on Sunday sent the trend soaring, a phenomenon that could help Harris’s outreach to younger voters that could play a pivotal role in the Nov. 5 election.

That contrasts not only with 78-year-old Republican rival Donald Trump, but with Harris’s 81-year-old boss, President Joe Biden, who quit the race at the weekend and endorsed his vice president as his replacement at the top of the ticket.

A spokesperson for Charli XCX declined a request for an interview.

The ‘brat’ trend joins another Harris viral meme – audio from a 2023 speech that was pilloried before by critics, but is now embraced by Gen Z as a sort of existential philosophy.

“‘You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?'” Harris asks in the speech, quoting what her mother used to say, before laughing and then growing serious. “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”

The Internet hive mind has adopted a coconut emoji as an unofficial campaign symbol for Harris. TikTokers have used sound from the “coconut tree” speech in at least 3,000 videos, according to TikTok.

Harris’s membership in Alpha Kappa Alpha – the first Black Greek-letter sorority – at Howard University in Washington, D.C., is also sparking viral engagement online.

“Listening to the opposition knowing we have 22,190,813 members in the D9 abt (sic) to vote for Kamala!” says one video on TikTok featuring two women, one of which is in the AKA colors of pink and green. D9 refers to a group of nine historically Black fraternities and sororities.

To be sure, Harris has her share of haters online. Critics have pushed clips aimed at portraying her in a negative light, including compilations of her boisterous laugh, after Trump himself referred to her as “Laffin’ Kamala.”

Younger voters, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic, had so far been unenthusiastic about a presidential race between Biden and Trump, 78 years old.

“It’s very hard to understand Gen Z unless you’re Gen Z,” said Chris Mowrey, a Democratic social media influencer with 340,000 TikTok followers, referring to the generation born between 1997 and 2012.

Internet moments can translate to the ballot box, Mowrey added: “Young voters vote significantly more based on just personality and, like, vibes.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

US Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday hailed her boss’s legacy as “unmatched in modern history,” in her first remarks since Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed her candidacy.

Biden’s record is “unmatched in modern history,” Harris said at an event at the White House. “In one term, he has already surpassed the legacy of most presidents who have served two terms in office.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)