Tipsheet

Here's What Kamala Had to Say When Asked About Biden's 'Lock Him Up' Remark

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  October 23, 2024 4:00 PM

On Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris took a break from her day of preparing for a CNN town hall to hold a last-minute press conference of sorts during which she ranted and raved about former and potentially future President Donald Trump being Hitler. As is typical for Harris, she didn't take questions, though a reporter did ask a crucial one in response to President Joe Biden's comments about Trump saying that "we gotta lock him up."

While Harris rushed inside at the end of her remarks, a reporter could be heard calling out, "Madame Vice President, do you have any reaction about what the president said about 'lock him up?'"

On Tuesday night, while campaigning in New Hampshire, Biden went on a whole rant against Trump, as he also wildly misinterpreted the Trump v. United States decision on presidential immunity. "We gotta lock him up," Biden said, making it abundantly clear that he was talking about Trump.

Harris' actual remarks were about as shameful and terrible as her refusal to answer questions, including about the sitting president she serves under.

"So, yesterday, we learned that Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, a retired four-star general, confirmed that while Donald Trump was president, he said he wanted generals like Adolf Hitler had," Harris shared, with that Hitler narrative being propagated by Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic. That story has been called out repeatedly, including by Mayra Guillen, the sister of Vanessa Guillen, a murdered U.S. soldier whose name was used by Goldberg to engage in a political smear campaign against Trump. Harris, unsurprisingly, didn't even say Vanessa's name or reference her family's pain.

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It was all about Trump. 

"Donald Trump said that because he does not want a military that is loyal to the United States Constitution. He wants a military that is loyal to him. He wants a military who will be loyal to him personally, one that will obey his orders even when he tells them to break the law or abandon their oath to the Constitution of the United States," Harris continued to warn as she engaged further in fearmongering.

"It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler, the man who is responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans," Harris also went on to rant about during her remarks, using the fodder from a leftist outlet to add supposed credibility for her political rantings. "All of this is further evidence for the American people of who Donald Trump really is. This is a window into who Donald Trump really is from the people who know him best, from the people who worked with him side by side in the Oval Office and in the Situation Room," she continued to claim from there.

"Donald Trump is increasingly unhinged and unstable," Harris further warned, as if she hadn't doubled down hard enough on this sense of doom and gloom, and as if John Kelly were the only person worth mentioning in the former Trump administration. "And in a second term, people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guardrails against his propensities and his actions. Those who once tried to stop him from pursuing his worst impulses would no longer be there and no longer be there to rein him in."

Harris' "bottom line" made it even more clear that she saw these remarks as a campaign speech in the remaining desperate few days left in her campaign: "We know what Donald Trump wants. He wants unchecked power. The question in 13 days will be: What do the American people want?"

Biden was forced out of the race by his fellow Democrats on July 21, 94 days ago, and endorsed Harris later that same day. Harris still hasn't held a press conference where she takes questions from the press, and considering how poorly she sounds when speaking off the cuff or even in pretaped interviews, it's not hard to see why.

That she felt the need to come out for a couple of minutes to rant and rave about Trump being like Hitler, with fearmongering and no mention of Guillen's death is rather telling.

As to her question, Harris may not like the answer to her question on "What do the American people want?" Her lead over Trump, according to RealClearPolling, is down to just +0.6 at the national level, while Trump is up by +1.1 in the battleground states and could very well win all of them. 

It's not merely Harris herself who is out there propagating such a smear campaign from a reporter who has been called out by Vanessa Guillen's family, as well as former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and plenty of others. The DNC thought it was a good idea to put out an ICYMI press release on the story, and various Democratic accounts have also been pushing the story.

Attorney Natalie Khawam was also notably one of those slamming the story over X.