Andrew Yang: Harris embodies change much more than Trump to many Americans

Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang praised Vice President Harris Monday night, saying she embodies change to many Americans much more than her GOP rival former President Trump.

Yang, the founder of the Forward Party, noted that whichever candidate personifies “change” will have the upper hand in the election, now just two weeks away.

“It‘s one reason why whichever candidate feels like the change candidate I think has an advantage,” Yang said during his Monday night appearance on CNN’s panel “NewsNight” with the anchor Abby Phillip. “And even though Kamala is the sitting vice president, she embodies change much more than Donald Trump to a lot of Americans.”

Yang — who ran an unsuccessful campaign against President Biden and Harris in 2020 — announced in late July that he would back the vice president in November, saying he was concerned about a potential Trump second term. He also argued at the time that the former president does not have the “character” to serve.

His comments come as the vice president and former president are currently neck and neck in most polling.

Harris had a 2-point lead, 46 percent to 44 percent, over Trump when respondents were asked which contender “represents change” more, according to a survey released earlier this month from The New York Times and Siena College. Some 4 percent said they did not know or would choose another candidate, while only 2 percent said both. 

The Democratic nominee’s lead in that category was greater among young and nonwhite likely voters, according to the poll. Around 62 percent of nonwhite voters saw Harris as the change nominee while 29 percent said the same about the former president. Approximately 58 percent of likely voters under 30 sided with the Democratic nominee on the question of change whereas 34 percent picked Trump.

Republican National Committee (RNC) co-Chair Lara Trump dismissed the survey’s results shortly after they came out and questioned Harris’s ability to serve if she wins.

“Well, I don’t believe that poll at all,” Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, said in early October on Fox News. 

“And by the way, don’t take my word for it, take Joe Biden’s word for it because, he’s the one that told us the other day, Laura, that Kamala Harris is in there side-by-side with him making all the decisions, of course, that we’ve seen in that White House,” she told Fox’s Laura Ingraham.

“No one believes that there will be any sort of change with Kamala Harris,” the RNC co-chair said while saying shortly after that, “No one buys that Kamala Harris has the capability to do that job. And polls like that, I think, are absolutely ridiculous.”