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Salman Rushdie endorses Kamala Harris for US Presidency
Praises Indian origin Veep as key to preventing authoritarianism
New Delhi: Mumbai-born author Salman Rushdie has endorsed Kamala Harris’s candidacy for the US Presidency and said he believes she is the person who can prevent former president Donald Trump from dragging the country towards authoritarianism.
Rushdie has endorsed US Vice President Kamala Harris during a virtual ‘South Asian Men for Harris’ event attended by scores of leading names from the Indian-American community, including prominent lawmakers, authors, policy experts, entrepreneurs and diaspora organisations.
“It's a critical moment. I'm a boy from Bombay and it's great to see an Indian woman running for the White House. And my wife is African-American, so we like the fact that a Black and Indian woman is running for the White House,” Rushdie said.
Kamala Harris, 59, is the presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. She officially declared her candidacy after incumbent President Joe Biden withdrew from the race for a second term on July 20. She is expected to be officially declared as the presidential candidate by the Democrats next month.
The 77-year-old British-American novelist also noted that ethnicity itself is not enough. “We would not be gathering in this way let's say for Usha Vance or Nikki Haley,” he said, referring to the Indian-American wife of Republican Vice Presidential nominee J D Vance and the Indian-American former South Carolina Governor.
Rushdie said the momentum is because something “very extraordinary, transformative has happened in American politics” in just under one week. “The conversation has entirely changed with the arrival of Kamala Harris's candidacy and it's changed most joyfully, a way of optimism and positive, forward-thinking,” he said. Rushdie underscored that the community has to make that work because “we can't allow the alternative to happen". "This hollow man without a single noble quality, trying to drag this country towards authoritarianism. That cannot happen," he said, referring to 78-year-old Trump.
