Biden, Harris tout party unity, Trump lays on the insults

LARGO, United States — Joe Biden and Kamala Harris made an upbeat show of unity Thursday as they held their first joint public event since Harris replaced the president as the Democratic Party's candidate in November's election.

Chants of "Thank you Joe!" rang out from the audience at a community college in the Maryland suburbs outside Washington.

Biden announced a major deal to reduce medication prices for retirees on social welfare programs.

But the biggest star was Biden's vice president who has surprised many by uniting the Democratic Party and surging in the polls against Republican Donald Trump since her abrupt entry into the White House race.

"She can make one hell of a president," Biden said of Harris.

Shortly after the joint appearance, Trump delivered rambling and often angry remarks from his New Jersey golf club, before taking questions from a handful of journalists.

Harris has a "very strong communist lean" and will mean the "death of the American dream," he said.

The real estate billionaire and scandal-engulfed former president has struggled to pivot his campaign since Biden dropped out on July 21 amid Democratic concerns that he lacked the stamina at 81 to do the job.

Until then, Trump was rising steadily in the polls, in large part on his message that Biden was losing his mental acuity -- a charge that gained currency when the president badly flubbed a televised presidential debate against his predecessor.

At his golf club event, the 78-year-old Trump began by reading lengthy statements from a binder notebook.

Ostensibly scheduled to attack Harris on inflation, with household products piled high on a table next to him, he almost immediately veered off into a series of complaints about the media and insults at Harris, who he said is "not smart."

Regarding the Israeli war against Hamas in Gaza, Trump said he'd told Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in a July meeting to "get your victory and get it over with... The killing has to stop."

Then at a later event with Jewish supporters, Trump turned his fire on Harris, claiming she has "maneuvered" to get support from "venomous anti-Semites in her party."

Harris is married to a Jew who, if she