Vice President Kamala Harris formally accepted the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday night at the Democratic National Convention. Harris, who was thrust to the top of the Democratic ticket after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, delivered a primetime speech that was light on policy specifics and heavy on partisan attacks.
Here’s what you need to know.
1. No hard policy proposals.
Harris was heavy on platitudes and light on policy in her speech, as she has been throughout her campaign. She has no policy proposal on her website and did not go into detail on the policy Thursday night.
2. Harris promises to be a president for all Americans, then attacks Republicans.
“I want you to know, I promise to be a president for all Americans,” Harris said Thursday. “You can always trust me to put country above party and self.”
Moments later, Harris attacked Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, calling him an “unserious man” and warning that “the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.”
“Consider not only the chaos and calamity when he was in office, but also the gravity of what has happened since he lost the last election,” she continued. “Donald Trump tried to throw away your votes. When he failed, he sent an armed mob to the U.S. Capitol, where they assaulted law enforcement officers. When politicians in his own party begged him to call off the mob and send help, he did the opposite — he fanned the flames.”
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Harris continued to ratchet up the extreme rhetoric against Trump, just weeks after he was shot in the ear during an assassination attempt. Hours before her speech, police were searching for a man man allegedly expressed an intent to kill Trump, claiming that Trump would “deploy our active duty military against our own citizens.”
“Consider the power he will have, especially after the U.S. Supreme Court just ruled that he would be immune from criminal prosecution,” Harris said. “Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails, and how he would use the immense powers of the presidency of the United States.”
3. Harris admits she is a career politician.
“And to be clear, my entire career, I’ve only had one client: the people,” she said.
4. Harris says she’s for “free and fair elections” despite not winning a single vote in a presidential primary.
“You can always trust me to put country above party and self,” she claimed. “To hold sacred America’s fundamental principles, from the rule of law, to free and fair elections, to the peaceful transfer of power.”
Harris has never won a single vote in a Democrat presidential primary. She suspended her 2020 presidential campaign before primaries began, and won her current nomination after Democrats cast 14 million primary votes for Biden. The Democratic Party coronated Harris despite the fact that 73% of Democrats wanted a different nominee.
5. Harris falsely claimed Trump trying to cut Social Security and Medicare.
“We are not going back to when Donald Trump tried to cut Social Security and Medicare,” she said.
A USA Today fact check noted that Trump “didn’t attempt to cut general Social Security retirement benefits,” but did try to reduce spending for Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income.
“Trump did propose cuts to Medicare in his budgets for the fiscal years 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021,” the fact-check said. “But an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found that 85% of his proposed Medicare savings would come from healthcare providers and would lower costs for seniors.”
6. Harris highlights things she will do while in office, elides the fact that she is currently in office.
Harris highlighted some of her goals if she wins the presidency, many of which — like lowering “the cost of everyday needs like health care and housing and groceries” — are issues that the Biden-Harris administration could already be working on, but isn’t.
“We will provide access to capital for small-business owners and entrepreneurs and founders,” she continued. “And we will end America’s housing shortage, and protect Social Security and Medicare. … Well, instead of a Trump tax hike, we will pass a middle-class tax cut that will benefit more than 100 million Americans.”
7. Harris makes bogus claims about the southern border and the immigration crisis.
“Donald Trump believes a border deal would hurt his campaign, so he ordered his allies in Congress to kill the deal,” Harris claimed. “As president, I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed, and I will sign it into law.”
Harris accused Trump of sabotaging a border security bill last year that “conservative Republicans” backed. In reality, the Republican who helped write the bill later walked away from the effort as Democrats played “political games” with the legislation. Republicans overwhelmingly rejected the bill, which they argued would legalize illegal immigration.
Biden used executive action to end Trump’s border politics on his first day in office. For the next three years, Democrats claimed that there was no crisis at the border as historic numbers of illegal aliens flooded into the country. As the election neared, Democrats authored a border bill that they knew would never be passed in a bid to pivot and blame the border crisis on Republicans.
8. Harris claims that she will back military. Her administration has backed cutting military funding.
“As commander in chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world,” she claimed.
The Washington Post noted that the Biden-Harris administration has “repeatedly proposed budgets that have failed to keep military spending ahead of inflation.”
The spending cuts come amid a mounting threat of military confrontation with communist China.
9. Harris makes false claims about Trump and NATO.
Harris claimed that Trump “threatened to abandon NATO” and that he “encouraged Putin to invade our allies. Said Russia could ‘do whatever the hell they want.'”
Trump said that NATO countries in Europe needed to start paying their fair share of NATO’s defense budget if they expected the United States to defend them against Russian aggression.
10. Harris would not blame Hamas for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Harris spoke strongly supporting Israel before quickly pivoting.
“At the same time, what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many innocent lives lost. Desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking.”
At no point did Harris note that Hamas, a Palestinian Islamic terrorist organization backed by Iran, uses human shields in Gaza, often blocks aid from reaching civilians, and has stated that it wants Palestinian civilians to be killed in the conflict for public relations purposes.
“The suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination,” Harris said.
Pushing for “self-determination” for Palestinians means trying to give them their own recognized state after Hamas, the governing authority of Gaza, launched its unprecedented October 7 attack against Israel, killing 1,200 people.
11. Harris claims she will stand up to Iran.
“I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists,” she claimed.
The Biden-Harris administration has repeatedly kowtowed to Iran, including on a nuclear deal in which the administration was so weak in its approach that some American negotiators quit in protest.
Iranian-backed terrorist groups in the Middle East have launched at least 221 attacks against U.S. forces since October 7, and the Biden-Harris administration, afraid of upsetting Iran, has failed to respond with the necessary level of force to deter future attacks.
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