Late Saturday, Vice President Kamala Harris took a cue from Donald Trump’s playbook, telling hotel, restaurant, and service workers in Nevada that she plans to pursue ending taxes on tips, a proposal her Republican rival had introduced weeks earlier. “It is my promise to everyone here that, when I am president, we will continue our fight for working families of America, including to raise the minimum wage and eliminate taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers.” Harris told a rally at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.
Trump first proposed the idea at his Vegas rally in early June. He swiftly responded on his Truth Social platform, suggesting she had appropriated his idea to save face with the service industry at the heart of the Las Vegas entertainment hub. “Kamala has no imagination, whatsoever, as shown by the fact that she played ‘COPYCAT’ with, NO TAXES ON TIPS!” he wrote.
“How long will it be before Kamala Harris comes out with another TRUMP policy like, ‘No Taxes will be paid by our Senior Citizens on Social Security?’ She’s looking really bad now! Everyone is waiting to see what idea, or policy of mine, she will copy next,” he added.
It’s the latest attempt by Harris to rebrand herself as far less liberal than she really is. According to the Washington Examiner, “Harris has spent her career championing progressive legislation, from the Green New Deal to Medicare for all. Now, she’s backtracking on some of that support as she tries to rally voters behind her as the Democratic nominee since President Joe Biden dropped out last month.”
A campaign official informed Fox News that Harris no longer supports a compulsory buy-back program for AR-15s and similar firearms. While running for president in 2019, she said, “We have to have a buy-back program and I support a mandatory buy-back program,” at a forum in Las Vegas. Trump has already capitalized off her previous comments, telling supporters at a Georgia rally, “She supports mandatory gun confiscation … Would anybody mind if they came into your house and took away your gun? … She’s for taking away all of your guns.”
In addition, Harris has flip-flopped on several other issues, including a previous claim that she would ban fracking, costly “Medicare-for-all” (single-payer health system), expand the Supreme Court by packing it with liberal justices, guarantee federal jobs to anyone who needs one (hugely expensive), and defunding police.
Harris’ campaign is also touting her supposed record in getting tough with illegal immigrants during her time as a California prosecutor and state attorney general, though she — as ‘border czar’ — had no interest in solving the chaotic border situation during her and Joe Biden’s administration, according to a retired Border Patrol chief who confirmed on Monday that Harris never spoke to him, even after she was tasked to lead a major facet of the immigration crisis.
Retired Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott, who headed the agency during the final year of the Trump administration and the first seven months of the Biden administration, reported that policy briefings with the White House ceased entirely when the current administration took office. This lack of communication persisted despite Harris’s appointment by the White House to tackle the “root causes” of illegal immigration from Central America, the Daily Caller reports.
“Absolutely not,” Scott said to the Daily Caller when asked if Harris ever personally spoke with him during his time leading the Border Patrol. “As soon as the [Biden-Harris] administration came in, we were basically told in no uncertain terms that if they wanted our opinions, they would ask, but they never asked. At no time did Biden or Harris ever ask to meet with or get briefed by U.S. Border Patrol,” Scott continued. “No meetings at all.”
Scott also confirmed that the lack of communication continued even after the White House appointed Harris in March 2021 to address the “root causes” of illegal migration from Central America, which constitutes a significant portion of illegal border crossings. Although Harris and her allies have recently dismissed the “border czar” title given to her by the media, Scott argues that she was still assigned a clear mandate to tackle a major aspect of the immigration crisis—an effort he believes she has failed to deliver on.
“It was very clear to us and everyone else that she was appointed to actually take the lead and spearhead an initiative on border security,” Scott said. “One of the facets was on the root causes. So if you only focus on the root causes, she went down to Central America, and the countries that she talked about on her one and only trip, the illegal immigration from those countries like doubled or tripled,” the retired chief explained. “She still failed miserably, and there was no follow-up.”
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