LAS VEGAS — Vice President Kamala Harris' repeated use of scripted answers shows disrespect for voters, said Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democrat who famously taunted the vice president during a 2019 debate.
“Kamala Harris today is the same person she was when she ran for president in 2020: she excels at delivering well-rehearsed lines on the debate stage,” Gabbard told The Washington Post.
“What's most offensive is that she thinks the American people are stupid enough to believe her well-rehearsed lines and ignores the realities of our lives and the hardships that many of us face directly because of her and her time in office,” she continued.
Gabbard represented Hawaii in the U.S. House of Representatives for four terms before running for the Democratic nomination in 2020, but ultimately left the race and the party.
She's currently a supporter of Donald Trump, and The Washington Post caught up with her at a weekend event promoting the former president's bid for a second term.
Beyond her inability to offer much more than a string of words when she is forced to go off script, Ms. Harris has many weaknesses. Former senators have offered bleak assessments of her record.
“People don't have the luxury of what they used to have and they're struggling to maintain a basic standard of living,” she told The Washington Post. “Directly because of the foreign policy decisions of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, we're on the brink of World War III and nuclear war and we're embroiled in multiple wars around the world.”
Gabbard said her mission in “Sin City” was to “shine a light on the truth and remind the American people of Kamala Harris' record, and also to remind President Trump's record and how he's succeeded in all the ways that Kamala Harris has failed.” The mission came at a “Restore America” event hosted by race car driver Danica Patrick, where the alleged sexting target, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., appeared onstage.
Gabbard is the first Samoan-American voting member of Congress and is widely known for outdoing Harris in the 2019 Democratic presidential debate in Detroit.
Gabbard sharply criticized Harris' record as California's attorney general, accusing her of jailing more than 1,500 people for marijuana offenses, hiding evidence that exonerated death row inmates, and keeping inmates in state prisons “long after their sentences have expired to use them as cheap labor.” Per Politico reported that Harris was “stuck for an answer.”
The exchange dealt a blow to Harris' campaign, causing her to withdraw before the Iowa caucuses and fail to win a single delegate.
Gabbard said Harris can deliver scripted sentences on stage, as she did in her September 10 debate with Trump, but doesn't really go beyond the surface.
Gabbard said the vice president has “been absent from duty for the last three and a half-plus years, almost four years in the White House, failing to take responsibility for everything that's gone wrong, everything that's gone very, very wrong, when it comes to issues that really matter to the American people, from open borders to historic levels of inflation to massive increases in the cost of living.”
Gabbard said Harris “doesn't want the American people to know who she really is, so she is using the power of the pollsters, the propaganda media and big tech companies to present a version of herself that she believes will help her win the election.”
The Army Reserve officer, who published a book this year called “For the Love of Country: Abandoning the Democrats,” said she saw common frustrations among voters during her travels to battleground states such as Nevada.
“There are a lot of people out there who are frustrated with the way politics is happening, who are frustrated that our leaders in Washington seem to be forgetting about them,” Gabbard said. “Look at what happened in East Palestine, Ohio. Look at what happened in my home state of Hawaii, the wildfires on Maui. Look at communities in Louisiana that have been hit by multiple hurricanes and are still struggling. There are a lot of people out there who feel left behind for a variety of reasons.”
The Trump campaign is zeroing in on those voters, she said. “No matter how hard Kamala Harris tries, she can't escape that responsibility. And therein lies the challenge and opportunity we face in the coming days.”
