In a wild Tuesday, July 23 segment on CNN’s “Situation Room,” CNN political commentator Ashley Allison suggested, in response to a comment from a former Trump Administration official about VP Kamala Harris’s seemingly obvious incompetence, particularly in her role in overseeing the border, that it is offensive to black women to call VP Harris incompetent.
As background, the conversation stemmed from Biden dropping out of the 2024 election and appointing VP Harris as his successor. Doing so, Biden posted on X, “My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.”
The conversation itself began with CNN political commentator Van Jones insisting that going after Harris is “insulting black women,” saying, “The Republican Party will tarnish itself irrevocably by the way, Republican Party even trying to get black folk over there, trying to get black men over. They’re trying to get Latinos over there. They’re going to lose all of that if they started insulting black women the way they, they’re starting yesterday.”
Pushing back on that comment, former Trump administration official Matt Mowers described what actually matters to the average American voter, saying, “It comes down to three I’s: immigration, inflation, incompetence. You have Kamala Harris, who’s the deciding vote for the Inflation Reduction Act that actually spent trillions of dollars causing inflation.”
He then got to VP Harris’s dismal record in overseeing the border, saying, “She was Biden’s border [chief] when we’ve had record number of border crossings. And incompetent, she stood side-by-side with Joe Biden on every single foreign policy disaster we’ve had, including the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. She owns that record. That’s all Donald Trump has to talk about. The rest will take care of itself.”
That’s when Ashley Allison chimed in and sounded off on the characterization of VP Harris as incompetent. Beginning, she snapped, “She’s not incompetent, okay. Like, you don’t become the attorney general of California or senator or the vice president of United States. By calling her incompetent you’re calling the 81 million people who voted for her incompetent as well.”
Continuing, she insisted that it is somewhat offensive to characterize VP Harris in such a manner and said that VP Harris shouldn’t be called names. She said, “Let me just say this, that is what we’re talking about. There is a way to attack her record on policy without calling her a name. Incompetent is an unflattering name, and when people do that to black women, that is what Van is talking about. You might not agree, but as a black woman, let me tell you how we hear it.”
Watch them here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
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