Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance criticizes Kamala Harris for her many “flip-flops” after she gave CNN her first major interview as the Democratic candidate in the race for the White House.
Flip-flops? As in beach sandals?
Of course, it was not about the color of the current vice president’s favorite Havaianas, but rather about her changes of opinion on certain crucial issues such as shale gas or the management of the southern border of the United States. Changes that journalist Dana Bash addressed head-on during the interview, but not enough for the Ohio senator’s taste.
Let’s say it from the outset, the criticism initially raises a smile since the person who makes it knows a lot about trading political flip-flops.
Not a day goes by without a commentator pointing out that JD Vance once called Donald Trump a potential “America’s Hitler” in a 2016 message to a friend that was made public. “I keep wondering if Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon, which wouldn’t be so bad (and might even be useful) or if he is America’s Hitler,” his email missive from that time read.
PHOTO MORRY GASH, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, has not failed to draw attention to Kamala Harris’s inconsistencies in recent days.
And this was no exception. In her feature on JD Vance published in our pages Saturday, my colleague Janie Gosselin recalled that he also compared Donald Trump to the heroin that is wreaking havoc in the United States. “Trump is a cultural heroine. Thanks to him, some people feel better for a while, but he is incapable of fixing what is hurting them.”
Read the article “JD Vance, hillbilly and proud of it”
Asked about his own “flip-flops” when Trump chose him as his campaign partner, Vance argued that he simply changed his mind. “I was skeptical of Donald Trump, but President Trump was a fantastic president and he changed my mind and many Americans,” he offered in response during the interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
However, on Friday, the Ohio senator, who put on the shoes of the “Never Trump” before joining the camp of the former Republican president, was not ready to grant the same freedom of thought to his Democratic rival.
“If you have values, why change your mind on literally every issue you had an opinion on?” asks JD Vance.
Once again, the Trump camp is blaming the other side for its own political sins. Nothing new there.
That said, the superficiality of Kamala Harris’s responses to her ideological reversals remains something to be desired.
There are several good reasons for changing one’s mind in politics. The main ones are related to changing circumstances and the emergence of new facts.
PHOTO CORNELL WATSON, WASHINGTON POST ARCHIVES
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris
German and Japanese leaders have explained at length how Russian aggression in Ukraine and Chinese aggressiveness in the Pacific are forcing them to review their anti-militarist positions and increase their military budgets.
In Montreal in 2022, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, responding to criticism, stated that within her government, which had decided to support the Ukrainian war effort, pacifism was as important as preventing genocide. After the Russian aggression against Ukraine, the tension between the two concepts justified a change of course. “If we have to choose between the aggressors and the victims, we choose the victims,” she had subtly justified.
Kamala Harris was not exactly as tactful in her response to Dana Bash’s questions about her change of direction on the delicate issue of shale gas fracking.
The woman who called for a ban on shale gas in 2019 now maintains that she is not in favour of such a ban, even though many studies have demonstrated the devastating environmental impact of this exploitation.
There are a thousand ways to justify this about-face. Mme Harris might have said that now that 60 percent of U.S. oil comes from this controversial extraction method, it is hard to put the genie back in the bottle. Or that the changing global energy landscape since the war in Ukraine requires a balance between energy independence and environmental protection.
Instead, Kamala Harris simply said that she has not called for a moratorium since 2020 and that it is possible to achieve a green economy thanks to the investments of the Biden administration while continuing the very polluting extraction of shale gas. Really?
Rather, the response suggests that the Democratic candidate does not allow herself to criticize the industry, which is particularly important in a state she must rally if she wants to win the election: Pennsylvania.
The same is true of his position on the southern border. After arguing against the criminalization of the border by Donald Trump’s administration, Mr.me Harris is now talking about “illegal immigration,” using terminology that the right has spent years imposing.
It’s worse than changing flip-flops, it’s putting on those of the other side.