Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris chats with the hosts during a commercial break at The View, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024, in New York. From left are Ana Navarro, Harris, Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Kamala Harris started the week with a bang.
“I have a Glock and I’ve had it for some time,” she told Bill Whitaker on the Monday special edition of “60 Minutes.” I mean look at my background in law enforcement.”
“Duh,” right? But it’s a point she needed to address. Kamala is a bad ass with a gun.
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Trump? He’s the big ass with a bag of burgers.
Voters need to know the things that separate the two candidates. Kamala is the law and order person. Trump is the lawbreaking felon with 34 convictions who thinks he’s above the law.
And that’s how Harris kicked off her media blitz that included “The View,” “Howard Stern,” “Call Me Daddy,” the Colbert late show, then ending up this week in Vegas for good reason.
ADVERTISEMENTShe needs the guys.
Not the MAGA-prone white guys, but the men of color apparently blindsided by a woman who is simultaneously African American and Asian American, and who is powerful and savvy enough to make history as the 47th president of the United States.
Black men, Latinx men I talk to get overly macho when you ask them about voting. They blurt out the name “Trump” as if in self-defense.
ADVERTISEMENTSo again, Harris was happy to wave her gun to attract the guys.
“Have you ever fired it?” asked CBS’ Whittaker.
“Yes,” Harris laughed. “Of course, I have, at a shooting range.”
My Lyft focus groups
When I visited Nevada recently, I sensed that freedom-loving women there will have to carry that battleground state.
That’s after talking to Nevadans during my “Lyft ride focus groups,” (the only times I had a real captive audience). One Black male driver was so anti-Harris when I pointed out a previous passenger left a pro-Harris poster, he reached back, grabbed the sign, and ripped it to shreds.
He explained he wasn’t for anyone. He had no time for politics. He was just happy driving his Lyft and being left alone.
In fact, few really wanted to talk about politics. The Filipino guys I talked weren’t willing to engage. I did some a big billboard about Harris and Filipino Pride. But among folks I randomly engaged with, there was a real disenchantment with government and our leaders. The Lyft drivers especially were more quiet than not. Not even for a five-star rating.
Most all the drivers I had were youngish, under 40, and concerned about the economy.
The Latinx drivers were more willing to talk.
“Voting for Trump?” I asked.
“Look at the price of gas, the price of anything,” they said. “It’s been tough.”
I told them inflation is down to 2.5 percent. And that if Trump got in, he’s going to impose tariffs on Chinese goods, that companies will pass on to consumers. Nobel economists say Trump’s economic plan guarantees greater inflation.
Most had nothing to say but the standard. “Harris has had four years,” they say.
Really? In the No.2 subordinate role, where you serve at the pleasure of the president. If a vice president is so influential, why don’t the MAGA guys take the guy they wanted to hang more seriously? Mike Pence says he’s not voting for Trump for good reason.
On my last day, I got a driver, a Mexican immigrant named Enrique. To him there was no question. Who was he backing?
“Anyone but Trump,” he said. “I’m voting for her.”
A shot of testosteronic sanity in the desert.
The race is so close, it’s hard to figure what the national polls truly reflect. Harris is ahead by 2 percentage points, 49-47 percent, according to the latest Times/Sienna College poll. But that could reflect an abundance of California voters where Harris leads big. Or it could reflect an abundance of Florida voters, where Trump leads bigly. The Electoral College is what counts, and that’s where attracting men of color in swing states could make a bigger real difference than swaying undecideds or independents.
Racist Trump’s bad genes
Harris said a lot in that “60 Minutes” program that Donald Trump refused to participate in. He didn’t want to be fact checked. It fact checks everybody. And he claimed “60 Minutes” lied about him in a 2020 report. It didn’t.
Maybe Trump backed out because on Monday he was spouting off Hitlerian philosophy on a friendly conservative talk radio program. Trump has gone beyond the simple “they’re eating dogs, they’re eating cats.”
Now Trump says this: “How about allowing people to come to an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers. Many of them murdered far more than one person. And they are now happily living in the United States. You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes, and we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”
Trump was shooting off his mouth like the conservatives in California in the 1940s who espoused Eugenics – the belief that had our state’s mental hospitals rounding up, committing and sterilizing all the imbeciles in order to control the genetics of our state in the name of a better society.
Hitler liked going after bad genes too. It’s an idea that should peel off some men of color to take a second look at Harris.
But the “60 Minutes” exchange that stunned me was when Whitaker, an African American reporter, asked, “There’s so many people supporting Donald Trump, the man you’ve called a racist. How do you bridge that seemingly unbridgeable gap?”
What a weird question. People of color have had to bridge the racist gap all our lives. Harris knew how to answer.
“I believe that the people of America want the leader who’s not trying to divide us and demean,” Harris said. “I believe that the American people recognize that the true measure of the strength of a leader is not based on who you beat down. It’s based on who you lift up.”
We know Trump lifts up elite whites and billionaires. Now add dictators, according to Bob Woodward (the Watergate author with Bernstein) – who, in his new book, reports Trump sent Putin COVID-19 tests in secret during the pandemic.
That’s who Trump lifts up. The enemy.
To further cement his lack of fitness for office, Trump continued talking to Putin long after losing the presidency, according to Woodward. That’s the former commander in chief fraternizing with the enemy.
Harris addressed all that on the “Howard Stern” show on Tuesday.
“Donald Trump has the desire to be a dictator,” she said. “He admires strong men, and he gets played by them because he thinks that they’re his friends, and they are manipulating him full time, manipulating him by flattery and favor.”
Americans were dying trying to get COVID tests and the president was sending tests in secret to a murderous dictator, Harris said on the Stern show Tuesday.
How many more comparisons do you need to commit to one candidate now? Even hardcore MAGA males must realize the danger of Trump. When Trump opens his mouth, he shoots himself in the foot.
Every news cycle there’s something Trump says or does that lets you know he’s a depraved, older man who isn’t qualified to lead the world’s No.1 democracy.
If you can vote early, do so, then tell your friends why it’s important to vote in an election where every vote counts.
Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. He writes a column for the Inquirer.net’s USA Channel. Listen to his micro-talk show on www.patreon.com/emilamok.
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