Vice president nominee Kamala Harris on Wednesday declared that the United States is “crying out for leadership” in her first joint appearance with the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden who picked her as his running mate.

“The case against Donald Trump and Mike Pence is open and shut,” said the former California attorney general, in the first joint campaign event alongside Biden in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.

As the first woman of color to be a presidential running mate for the Democratic Party, Harris said the country in particular needed to face up to the enduring problem of racism.

“We’re experiencing a moral reckoning with racism and systemic injustice that has brought a new coalition of conscience to the streets of our country demanding change,” she said.

She ripped into President Donald Trump for his alleged mismanagement of Coronavirus and also vowed to defeat him to repair the racial divisions that have roiled the country.

In the joint campaign event, Joe Biden praised Kamala Harris as the “right person” for the Vice President role.

“I had a great choice but I have no doubt that I picked the right person to join me as the next vice president of the United States of America and that’s Senator Kamala Harris,” he said in his address.

“Kamala is smart, tough, experienced… As a child of immigrants, she knows personally how immigrant families are rich in our country as well as the challenge of what it means to grow up as a Black and Indian-American in USA,” Biden said.

During his opening remarks, Joe Biden said his running mate Harris’ story is “America’s story”.

Biden further cornered Trump for calling Kamala Harris “nasty” and a “leftwing fanatic”. “Is anyone surprised Donald Trump has a problem with strong women?” he asked.

In a brazen attack on the vice president nominee, US President Donald Trump on Tuesday called Kamala Harris the “most horrible” member of the US Senate and said he was “surprised” Joe Biden had picked her as his running mate.

Addressing reporters at the White House, Trump said Harris did not impress him when she was vying for the Democratic nomination in primaries eventually won by Biden.

“She did very very poorly in primaries. I was pretty surprised that he picked her. She was very nasty to Joe Biden and it is hard to pick somebody who is that disrespectful,” President Donald Trump said.

He added that during the bruising 2018 Senate confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Harris was “the meanest, the most horrible, the most disrespectful of anybody in the US Senate.”

In a historic move that marks a breakthrough for Indian Americans in US politics, Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden selected Kamala Devi Harris as the nominee for vice president.

Thus, Harris has also become the first black woman to compete on a major party’s presidential ticket.

Harris, 55, whose father is an African from Jamaica and mother an Indian, is currently the US Senator from California and often has been described as a trailblazer by former president Barack Obama.

A first term Democratic Senator from California, Harris had launched her presidential campaign in January 2019.

After initial few months, her campaign could not take off and by the end of the year, she withdrew from the race.

Early this year, she endorsed Biden for presidency and during the primaries and pre-primary season, she did not have a good relationship with Biden.

The two often clashed including the one CNN debate last year.

The two leaders appear to have mend their ways in the last few months.