Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon called on her team to begin the work of “protecting America from the impacts of a Trump Presidency” in a message to staffers following Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to President-elect Donald Trump, CNN reports.
“Losing is unfathomably painful. It is hard. This will take a long time to process. But the work of protecting America from the impacts of a Trump Presidency starts now,” O’Malley Dillon said in an email to staff obtained by CNN.
She continued, “I know the Vice President isn’t finished in this fight, and I know the very people on this email are also going to be leaders in this collective mission. View this as the beginning, not the end.”
O’Malley Dillon, who managed President Joe Biden’s successful 2020 campaign and served as White House deputy chief of staff, drew a sharp contrast with Trump’s handling of the last transition, noting that Harris told Trump in a concession call that “she would work with President Biden to ensure a peaceful transfer of power, unlike what we saw in 2020.”
She expressed gratitude to the team for their work, offering her own assessment of the reasons behind the loss.
“The whole country moved to the right, but compared to the rest of the country, the battleground states saw the least amount of movement in his direction. It was [the] closest in the places we competed. That speaks to both the work you did, and the scale of the challenge we ultimately couldn’t surmount,” she said.
