Kamala Harris has been in the running for less than a week and her opposition is clawing for any dirt they can get to slow her roll. The former Attorney General of California and current Vice President is no stranger to the abuse her opposition can sling her way. But in one of the cruelest twists of the knife the Democrats have pulled on Donald Trump, Harris is incredibly qualified and under a billion years old, forcing them to pivot from their Biden talking points.
With no real fodder to smear the new opposition, Republicans have resorted to some of the oldest plays in the book. Leaning on racism, misogyny, and birtherism, they’ve discarded all pretense of civility. But their most recent and most hilarious attempt shows just how short-sighted and hypocritical the right is. Fox News’ current plan of attack is to lean on old Tweets, specifically one revolving around disgraced actor Jussie Smollett from 2019.
What did Kamala Harris say about Jussie Smollett?
For those who don’t remember the name, Jussie Smollett is an American actor. He rose to fame as a child but gained prominence after appearing as Jamal Lyon in the Fox drama Empire. Smollett’s role was considered groundbreaking. As a gay black man, he brought a level of authenticity to his role, which portrayed a side of gay men that the media largely ignored.
Smollett was riding high on his career in 2019, which made his crime all the more confusing. In January 2019, Smollett claimed he was attacked outside of his apartment by a group of men. He alleged that the men had poured bleach on him, used racial and homophobic slurs, physically assaulted him, and looped a noose around his neck.
Smollett specifically noted that the men had said, “This is MAGA country” during the attack, which was perfectly staged so it could be caught on camera – though it was later revealed they were pointing in the wrong direction.
In the wake of the attack, democratic senators, high-profile black celebrities, and even President Trump denounced the violence. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) both called the attack an “attempted modern-day lynching,” and pushed for a federal anti-lynching bill. The bill, called the Emmett Till Antilynching Act for a 14-year-old boy who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, was codified in 2022.
It took police less than 2 weeks to catch the “offenders” who turned out to be acquaintances of Smollett. When it became clear that Smollett was under investigation for filing a false report, Harris again took to social media, saying she was “sad, frustrated, and disappointed.”
Smollett was charged with 6 counts of filing a false police report, disorderly conduct, and five felony counts. The officer in charge of the investigation, Eugene Roy, who was featured in the Fox Nation documentary Jussie Smollett: The Anatomy of A Hoax, seems to be the lynchpin of this particular Harris drag.
Unfortunately for the retired chief of detectives, his words from the documentary are being twisted. In the docu-series, the retired officer lambasts those who participated in the “rush to judgment,” and criticizes everyone who jump to a “hasty decision before all the facts are known.” He did, however, zero in on all government officials who threw their support behind the actor.
“It’s one thing to express your support for a friend. It’s another thing to use your platform as a government official to prejudge a case before it’s played out. Before all the facts are known.”
While we agree that politicians should probably lay off social media (we’re looking at you, Lauren Boebert), community leaders need to stand up to violence. This particular incident may have turned out to be a ludicrous hoax, but it finally passed a bill that has been in the works for more than a century.
Moreover, to lean on this undeleted Tweet as a social faux-pas worthy of closer examination is confounding in the Trump era. The former president launched his own social media platform, Truth Social, so he could have more freedom to post whatever he wanted. Likewise, he uses his rallies as a soapbox to spew whatever nonsense his age-addled brain can come up with.
This is one game Republicans don’t want to play. The disgrace of a former president has a laundry list of malicious, cruel, sexist, and hateful things he’s said over his sordid career. At the end of the day, there is literally nothing Kamala Harris has ever said that can top “grab ‘em by the p***y.”