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July 7, 2022

Kamala Harris delivers another word salad after the Highland Park shooting

By Rajan Laad

It was obviously a somber moment after the July 4 parade shooting in Highland Park, Illinois that left seven dead and injured more than two dozen.

Vice President Kamala Harris was scheduled to make an appearance.  Her task was simple but important: she had to pay tributes to the victims, commiserate with relatives of the victims, and stand by the survivors. 

She had one job.

The only good news was that there were no ill timed laughs as Harris spoke in the Chicago suburb.

Harris began by promising Highland Park residents that the shooter will be brought to justice.

But matters rapidly deteriorated when she said the following:

[W]e'll deal with what we need to deal with in terms of also, as we move forward, all agreeing that we've got to be smarter as a country in terms of who has access to what and, in particular, assault weapons. And we got to take this stuff seriously, as seriously as you are — because you have been forced to have to take it seriously.

This is indefensible for its content, the choice of words, and the way it was delivered.

Harris attempted to politicize the somber occasion by calling for restrictions on assault weapons. 

Does Harris not know that the sale, possession, and use of firearms and ammunition are heavily regulated in the state of Illinois? To legally possess firearms or ammunition, Illinois residents must have a Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) card. Illinois also has a red flag law that allows fo confiscation of guns on mere suspicions. Most importantly, since 2013, the possession of assault weapons was designated illegal in Highland Park.

Now to the “take this stuff seriously” portion of her address. The word ‘stuff’ is used in casual and informal situations and emphatically not while attempting to heal the wounds of a community that has just experienced dastardly violence. The repetition that rendered the sentence meaningless is inconsiderate given the graveness of the circumstances.

Nobody would have grudged Harris if she had carried a note to refer to while she made her remarks. It was essential she got every syllable of her address right the very first time. Words matter greatly, especially after a tragedy such as the mass shooting in Highland Park.

As always her tone was casual, which is disrespectful considering the occasion, and her body language, with the excessive hand gestures, seemed out of synch with her words.

This is recent in a series of ignominious verbal mishaps from Kamala Harris.

A few weeks back, Harris blundered during last month's Juneteenth holiday while addressing schoolchildren. It has been 400 years since slavery in America, but Harris claimed it has been 400 years of slavery.

Back in May, she was at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit attempting to expound on the importance of teamwork.

In March, Harris was involved in another verbal catastrophe while meeting with the Jamaican prime minister.

Also in March, at the Munich Security Conference, Harris struggled to explain the crisis in Ukraine.

Yet again in March, during a joint presser in Warsaw alongside Polish president Andrzej Duda, Harris incongruously erupted into laughter when asked about the U.S.'s plans to accept Ukrainian refugees.

Back in January, on NBC News, Harris rambled when asked about Biden's failing strategy to combat COVID-19.

Last October, Harris ruined a pre-recorded NASA video aimed at promoting science among young children.

What explains these frequent gaffes?

Knowing her lack of talent in the speechmaking department, either Harris herself or her advisers should always insist she reads from notes.  She would sound dreary reading from a text, which is better than a verbal disaster from her attempts to ad-lib.  But she neither carries notes nor prepares before her remarks.  As the Washington Post and Washington Examiner noted, she doesn't do her homework.

It isn't only her lack of oratorical talent, but her lack of effort that is troubling.  She presumably has access to the best subject matter experts and speech coaches, yet she chose to wing it and speak extemporaneously.  It proves the cavalier attitude toward her office, her role, her legacy, and above all the reputation of her country.  

Harris's utterances make Julia Louis-Dreyfus's perpetually floundering vice president in the political satire Veep look like an adept wordsmith and a capable politician.

The only department where she fares worse than speaking is implementation and delivery.

When Biden assigned her the important task of resolving the border crisis, Harris began by showing reluctance to accept her assignment.  She took ages to act or even visit the border. 

Harris had no reply when asked by NBC News's Lester Holt why she hasn't visited the U.S.-Mexico border.

She did visit the border only because President Trump had announced his plan to visit. 

When she did go to Guatemala and Mexico, instead of working with those governments to stop the uncontrolled influx, she indulged in a theoretical exercise of discovering the "root causes" of illegal immigration.  Does she not know that people migrate to the U.S. simply for a better quality of life?  Did she forget that Biden's messaging on immigration during the campaign was seen as an open invitation to all would-be illegal migrants and the cartels that profit from smuggling them?

From this, we come to the reason why she was chosen as Biden's running mate.

Somebody in Biden's team was aware of Harris's incompetence and inarticulateness before the world knew.  This person knew she would make Biden, despite his rapidly declining cognitive abilities, look relatively smarter.

They chose her knowing that the liberal ecosystem would fawn over the fact that she is female and has pigment under her skin, which makes her the "first" among her demographic group to hold such a high office.  But apart from the attributes that are her owing to her genes, Harris has nothing to boast about.

In the end, Biden's handlers have accomplished what they intended to: the inarticulate and ineffectual Kamala has made senile and bungling Biden unimpeachable.

It is an astute but deeply cynical ploy with a focus on power rather than the well-being of the nation.

Image: Twitter screen shot.

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