Harris on what her mother would say about the election: 'Just go beat him'

Vice President Harris shared what her late mother would tell her to do in her fight against former President Trump during the final days of the 2024 presidential election.

“Just go beat him,” Harris said during her Thursday interview with NBC News. “That’s probably what she’d say. Yeah, that’s my mother.”

The Democratic nominee spoke with NBC News’s Yamiche Alcindor right before her Thursday rally in Phoenix, where she also said that her first priority if elected in November is to bring down prices.

“My first priority, which will be probably the package of bills, is about bringing down the cost of living,” Harris said during the nearly six-minute interview. “So it’s about housing, it’s about child care, it’s about what we need to do to deal with grocery prices. So it’s not one, but it’s a package that is, with one singular purpose, bringing down the cost of living.”

Harris’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, a biomedical scientist, died in February 2009 of cancer.

Harris was in Arizona on Thursday where she looked to rally voters in the battleground state. There, she was introduced by Senate hopeful Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who is facing off against Trump-backed Republican Kari Lake.

“Five days, Arizona, it’s time to get the job done,” Gallego said. “If we fight together we can, number one, beat Kari Lake. Number two, defeat Donald Trump. Number three, fight for a better future.”

Former President Trump currently leads Harris in Arizona by 1.9 percentage points, with 49 percent support to 47.1 percent, according to the latest The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s aggregate of polls.

After Arizona, Harris went to Reno and Las Vegas as part of her effort to reach Latino voters less than seven days before the election.