When former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard was a Democrat, she stirred controversy by criticizing then-California Sen. Kamala Harris’s prosecutorial record during their 2020 presidential primary debate. Now, Gabbard is advising former President Donald Trump to focus on Harris’s character in his upcoming debate against her later this month.
“It’s about her character,” Gabbard said during an interview with the Washington Examiner. “That was really what I exposed in that debate in 2019 when we were both candidates running for president, was her hypocrisy and how she would say one thing and do another.
“She would hold people, the people, to one standard and hold herself to a different standard. I challenged her on the record that she claimed to be proud of, and she had nothing to say to defend that record. Not much has changed between then and now,” Gabbard continued.
Gabbard’s advice contrasts with that of other Trump supporters, who are urging the former president to focus on criticizing Harris’s policies rather than her character. However, speaking at the Moms for Liberty National Summit in Washington, the Army Reserve officer argued that Trump could effectively address both aspects.
“If I can be helpful to him in any way, it really is just sharing the experience that I’ve had with her on the debate stage and how she will try to hide, deflect away from, distract away from the truth, the truth about who she is and her record, and the fact that the policies, at least so far that she has talked about just a little bit, stand diametrically opposed to her record,” she said.
“She is a fake person who cannot be trusted and who cares only about herself and her political ambition and not about the American people,” Gabbard continued.
During the interview, Gabbard offered few specifics about her role in Trump’s debate preparation for his September 10th matchup with Harris on ABC. Trump himself told reporters this week that he is “not spending a lot of time on it.”
“I think my whole life, I’ve been preparing for a debate,” Trump said. “Basically, you have to be real. You can’t cram 30 years of knowledge in your head in one week. There’s a little debate prep, but I’ve always done it more or less the same way.”
In 2019, Gabbard criticized Harris during a Democratic presidential debate for prosecuting over 1,500 individuals for marijuana offenses during her time as San Francisco’s district attorney and California’s attorney general.
Gabbard also highlighted Harris’s response on The Breakfast Club radio program, where she laughed when asked if she had ever smoked marijuana. Additionally, Gabbard accused Harris of blocking evidence that could have exonerated an innocent man from death row until the courts intervened.
Gabbard was referring to the 1983 quadruple murder case of Kevin Cooper, in which Harris’s office chose not to order advanced DNA testing. Despite former California Gov. Jerry Brown and current Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decisions to conduct the tests, Cooper’s conviction remains unchanged. The Washington Post noted that the courts never mandated that Harris carry out the tests.
But, five years later, Gabbard is more focused on Harris’s vice presidency and is encouraging Trump to do the same on the debate stage.
“She’s been the vice president of the United States for the last 3 1/2 years, a breath away from the presidency, someone who she says is the last person in the room with President [Joe] Biden when he’s making a decision,” Gabbard said. “She has cast more tiebreaking votes in the United States Senate than any other vice president in history. She has not been some passive person sitting in the corner. She is responsible for every policy that the Biden-Harris administration has pushed forward in these last 3 1/2 years, policies that she has said time and time again she is proud of, touting their success.
“It’s not about tying her to Biden, it’s tying her to her own record,” she added. “She has very intentionally tied herself as vice president to Joe Biden, pointing out, both of them, that there is no space between them when it comes to policy, that they were a team, that they did everything together. This is about holding her to account for her record and sharing the truth with the American people that Kamala Harris is trying to hide with her lies.”
