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Updated: Feb 01, 2019 20:02 IST

US President Donald Trump will not get to pick his Democratic challenger for the presidency in 2020, but his money appears to be on Kamala Harris, who has indeed captured the top slot with a big launch in an expanding field of hopefuls.

And the president did not seem impressed by Harris in the same sham-way that he had when he welcomed the entry of former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, which was an open acknowledgment that the latter would help the president retain the White House by splitting Democratic voters.

“I would say the best opening so far would be Kamala Harris,” President Trump told The New York Times in an interview Thursday.

He pronounced the name as “Kameela”. Harris is working on getting the country to get the right pronouncement in a campaign video but the President does not seem to have seen yet.

“I would say in terms of the opening act, I would say, would be her,” he added. “A better crowd, better crowd, better enthusiasm.”

“Some of the others were very flat,” the president told NYT.

Harris, who is of Indian descent on her mother’s side, had had the best opening act yet, indeed. Her official announcement was on January 21, Martin Luther King Day, in memory of the legendary civil rights movement leader — Harris is African-American on her father’s side.

And her campaign kickoff past Monday in Oakland, California, where she was born and where she started out as a government lawyer, was grand, covered live by most TV news channels. It was called presidential by observers, who saw similarities to the presidential campaign of another first-time senator over 10 years ago, Barack Obama.

Harris, who is of Indian and African American heritage, has become the leading Democrat running for the party’s presidential nomination to take on President Trump in 2020.

And that has also turned her into a leading target of attacks from Republicans, specially supporters of President Trump who have tried sullying her candidacy with the same attack line that they had tried with Obama questioning his eligibility for president.

Trump has been dismissive of the others in the fray such as Elizabeth Warren, the fire-brand progressive Democratic senator from Massachusetts. He has attacked her relentlessly over her claims of Native American ancestry.

“I do think Elizabeth Warren’s been hurt very badly with the Pocahontas trap,” he said to The New York Times, reprising his long-running slur for her. “I think she’s been hurt badly. I may be wrong, but I think that was a big part of her credibility and now all of a sudden it’s gone.”

In contrast, Trump welcomed Schultz, a lifelong Democrat who is exploring his chances as an independent. “Howard Schultz doesn’t have the ‘guts’ to run for President!” Trump wrote in a Tweet, daring, and baiting, the former Starbuck CEO to run.

Schultz’s candidacy, it is feared by Democrats, will split the anti-Tump votes in 2020 and help the president win a second term.