Dave Brat: Americans should be very concerned about a new trade deal going through Congress

A new trade deal is making its way through Congress, and Congressman Dave Brat has a lot of concerns about some of the provisions in the bill. The unusual thing about this bill is that many strong conservatives are lining up on opposite sides of the fence. Some are for it, like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Ben Sasse. But Dave Brat and Mike Lee oppose it. Rep. Brat shared light on the issue on Thursday's radio show.

LISTEN:

GLENN: There are two things going on in the country that I just don't know what to make of. And one of them is Jade Helm. I just don't know what to make of that. I just don't know what to make of it. The other is the TTP. This is the Trans-Pacific Partnership. And there's no sunlight on it. And usually you can say, okay, well, who is for it, who is against it? Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, James Inhofe, Ben Sasse, Tim Scott, David Vitter, Joni Ernst, and James Risch -- is it Risch or Risch?

PAT: No, it's Risch.

GLENN: Risch. James Risch of Idaho, ranked the most conservative member of the Senate. That's saying something.

PAT: And they're for it. Right?

GLENN: They're for it. For it.

Against it, a guy who I think is one of the best constitutionalists in the Senate, Mike Lee. Rand Paul. Jeff Sessions. Richard --

PAT: Who sucks. Wait. Senator Jeff Sessions or --

GLENN: Yeah.

PAT: Okay. That's different.

GLENN: Richard Shelby of Alabama and a whole bunch of liberals.

PAT: I was thinking Pete Sessions who sucks.

GLENN: Yeah. So they voted against it in the Senate.

PAT: That's weird. That's weird.

GLENN: So I just don't know who to believe. Now, Dave Brat is the guy who beat Eric Cantor in Virginia and is in there really doing the right thing. I mean, so much so that Eric Cantor is already looking for somebody to run against him in 2016. I mean, just wants to get him out of there. So he's standing up every step of the way. Which way -- where do you stand on this, Dave?

DAVE: Hey, Glenn. Yeah, I'm a firm "no" on the thing for, you know, about ten reasons we can get into. But the number one is what you just said, you got to go into a security bunker to read the thing. And I've done that. When you come out, I'm not supposed to say what's in it. And I'm called a representative of the people, and it's hard to represent the people when the people don't have views because they can't read it. So the process problem is number one.

And I think after the Pelosi model of, you know, passing a bill to find out what's in it, I hope we've learned. So I'm a true conservative in the sense, if we don't know what's in it, you don't vote yes.

GLENN: Okay. So I agree with you on that, Dave. Now, I talked to Ted Cruz on this. He went into the box. He was greatly disturbed. He said, I read it. I didn't find anything that was horrible in it. He said, and it has a sunlight provision in it, for it to pass, it does have to have 60 days of sunlight. Is that true?

DAVE: Yeah. That's correct. But the end of the sentence is, there's a 60 day sunlight provision where you get to find out what's in it, and then the Congress gets an up-or-down vote as a whole. Well, you guys probably covered the doc fix. And on that thing, our leadership can go to Democrat leadership and find 300 votes, and it's a done deal. And worse than that, our guys have dug into it. Mick Mulvaney and Jim Jordan have done great work on this thing. And there are actually five high hurdles to stopping this thing. So basically if we vote yes -- the best way to think about this thing is just a locomotive train. Right? If we hit go, that train is going forward, and there's no stopping it.

GLENN: Okay. What's in it that's wrong?

DAVE: Well, that's the issue. Senator Sessions has been good on this thing. It's a living document. The scariest part of it is that it creates this Trans-Pacific Partnership Commission. And that commission will likely have the authority to not only change its membership and the agreement itself, but to issue regulations relating to immigration, environmental policy, currency policy, labor policy. It's an open-ended commission. And that's why I was using that locomotive analogy. Once you start that train down the road, in order to stop it, you have to go to noes in order to stop it from Ways and Means, the Rules Committee, Senate Finance, and the House and the Senate. So there's five votes you need to stop it. So our conservative group, the Freedom Caucus, with Jim Jordan and all these guys, we're trying to change the direction of that thing so that any member can stop it. And, you know, more resembles -- where any member can stand up at any time and say, that's a bunch of junk you're adding to it.

GLENN: So let me ask you this, Dave. You have Ted Cruz who is just lightning strong. You have Jim Inhofe who does not fool around. Ben Sasse has been really good. James Risch of Idaho has been really good. How are these guys on the other side of the fence? Have you talked to any of them?

DAVE: Yeah. I mean, I've talked to guys. My own caucus -- I mean, if you're in a district where agricultural is huge or shipping is huge or whatever, you know, to represent your constituents, some of them, you know, you have 11 countries. You lower tariffs a little bit more. Make trade a little easier. You know, I'm a free trader, you know, so that's the good side. But the conservative impulse is, okay, you have the trade part. But in this day and age, the first few words are the key. We'll give trade authority to President Obama. And that's the -- that's the big asterisk. So we're going to give more authority to a president who has already done a run around us on executive amnesty, on the IRF, and the list just goes down and down and down. Breaking promises on Obamacare. EPA overreach, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Some guys are in districts where trade is huge, and they're representing their people, which is their job. And so, you know, different representatives really do have a tough votes (phonetic) at times. But in my view, there's too many noes in this thing.

STU: Dave, we're a country that loves its whistle-blowers. Isn't there a responsibility for somebody, whether they're allowed to tell us what's in this thing or not, to tell us what's in there? This is our government.

DAVE: Well, WikiLeaks has pumped a bunch of it out there. So, I mean, it's getting around. The issue has more to do -- just last week President Obama hinted that maybe China will enter this thing. Well, that's a little detail, right, I mean, whether China joins. Maybe that matters. And the implications of these things are huge. So kind of ironically, Donald Trump I think has it right on trade. The US is getting rolled around the world by Russia, by China, and by the Middle East, and especially on trade.

And so trade properly viewed should be one powerful tool along with our military, our foreign aid budget, our university, our immigration system. What the US says to the rest of the world, hey, you behave and follow free markets and the rule of law and, you know, we'll all get rich together. If you do not. You're not part of the -- but no one, especially our CEO now, the executive and the president is using all the power of the United States of America for the good of the country. We're just treating it like a little narrow trade agreement that will lower tariffs a little bit and add to the bottom line for some companies. And, you know, I'm all for that. But my job is to represent the country, not just, you know, special interests.

GLENN: Okay. So people know. If you don't know who Dave Brat is, Dave is the representative from Virginia. He's the guy who beat Eric Cantor. But more importantly, he has a PhD in economics and a masters of divinity. So at least -- I haven't asked you the soul question, Dave. But, you know, at least on paper, your soul is doing fine.

DAVE: Yes.

GLENN: And you're -- and you're a PhD in economics, so you can -- you can read these things and look at them and say, this is going to affect us here, here, and here.

DAVE: Yeah. Well, the two are related. I mean, if you believe in God, you learn humility is one of the first things that you learn, that you're not the center of the universe. In the economics, there's a guy named Hayek, who is one of the fathers of the free market economics. And the book he wrote is called the Fatal Conceit. And the fatal conceit is to think that I'm smart enough to walk in a room and read 400 pages of legalese and believe it and know everything that's in a trade bill that's 400 pages long and digest it with everything that can go wrong. Right?

One of the good things about our two-party system is you can debate and you learn from each other. And that's what needs to happen in this process. We need to debate and duke it out and see what's good in this thing and what's a bunch of junk.

GLENN: That's what Ted said to me. He said, Glenn, quite honestly, I'm a guy who can read these bills and understand them. He said, but you can't go into a room and read something, you know, 400 pages and come out the other side having any idea what it really says. He said, that's why it needs sunlight. He said, I believe that when it's exposed, that's when people of interest will start going out and there will be teams all over the country looking at this bill. And that's when we really find out what it really means. He said, none of us can find out what it really means.

DAVE: Right. If he said that, he should -- in my mind, I mean, that's a no vote.

GLENN: Well, he said, the reason why is because you have to have it have sunlight. He said, look, I'm not opposed in principle. I don't want to speak for him. But he said, I didn't see anything that was glaring. He said, but I don't think I would. But that 30 or 60 days of sunlight is what's required to be able to understand it.

DAVE: Right.

GLENN: So then he told me that that's what's built into this, that there's 60 days of sunlight.

DAVE: Sixty days of sunlight, but then it's an up-or-down vote for the whole thing. So our 40 guys on this Freedom Caucus we got, which is a great group of faith guys and Constitution guys, we want it the other way around. We have eight checkpoints along the way, that if anybody lies, the bill is dead right there. You don't come to the end -- I mean, you know how D.C. works. Right? I came in at the end of last session on the cromnibus, and it was just loaded with junk. So 80 percent good or whatever, 20 percent bad. And in this city, that's -- you just vote, yeah. Right? That's called good governance. Dave learned how to govern. Just vote yes on everything.

GLENN: Did you see, Dave, anything? And I don't know if you can answer, obviously I look to you. But did you see anything in there that you thought was dangerous, besides -- did you see -- let me change this. Did you see anything in there that gave you any reason to believe that jumped out to you that said, this should be confidential? This should be behind closed doors?

DAVE: No, no. To be accurate to both sides of a good debate, I mean, the reason these trade agreements have some degree of secrecy is because you're debating prices, right? Tariff rates, which are basically prices. And every price has a good side and a bad side. Right? If you're a producer, you like a high price. If you're a consumer, you like a low price.

If you throw all those prices out in public, I mean, you'll have a food fight. So to give the benefit of the doubt to the other side on that kind of an issue, you want secrecy on the prices. But on the process, when you have a thing called a Trans-Pacific Partnership Commission, I want to know the power that's given that commission. And that part should surely be debatable. There's no reason we can't debate the process issues out in public without mentioning all the prices and stuff because, you know, that's where the 11 countries will, you know, have differences. You have to sort that out.

GLENN: All right. So Friday is the day. The vote happens tomorrow. And, Dave, what should people do? Should we call our congressmen?

DAVE: Yeah. Right. Ask your congressmen to explain to you what they know about it. And if they don't tell you anything, say, I don't trust the current regime. And I want to a no vote out of you. I mean, that's what -- the phone calls coming into my district are 21 against. And I'm voting my constituents and my principles. And in a year, if we sort this thing out and it becomes transparent and everything's fine, I'm a free trader, I'll vote yes. But right now -- Obamacare, right, it was so -- it was going to lower costs. Read the first sentence of Obamacare. Right? It will provide insurance to more people, and it will lower costs. Well, it didn't lower the costs. Everybody has the check in the mail now. You learn the hard way. And you have a $5,000 deductible. Oops. We didn't know that going in, in our talking points. And I'm worried the same thing can happen in this trade deal. Oops. There's a little deal in there, and we missed it. Well, that's not good governance.

GLENN: Okay. Dave, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

DAVE: Hey, if your folks want to help me out a little bit too, it's DaveBrat.com.

GLENN: You didn't even need Pat.

PAT: No, he was right there. He was right there.

GLENN: DaveBrat.com. Thank you very much, Dave. Good to have good guys in Congress. Thank you. I will tell you, I think I've come to my first thing with Ted Cruz that I think I disagree with him on.

PAT: Yeah, it's a close one on this.

STU: To point the other side, when you're citing Donald Trump as an expert on trade, I don't think I'm with you on that one. I think I would side with Ted and against Dave based on that. Because Donald Trump is not --

GLENN: Yeah. When I say this -- yeah, I agree with you on the Donald Trump thing. But when I say to you it's secret, do you trust these guys?

PAT: No.

GLENN: No. No, I don't.

3 BIGGEST lies about Trump's plans for deportations

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To the right, Trump's deportation plans seem like a reasonable step to secure the border. For the left, mass deportation represents an existential threat to democracy.

However, the left's main arguments against Trump's deportation plans are not only based on racially problematic lies and fabrications they are outright hypocritical.

Here are the three BIGGEST lies about Trump's deportation plans:

1. Past Deportations

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The left acts like Donald Trump is the first president in history to oversee mass deportations, but nothing could be further from the truth. Deportations have been a crucial tool for enforcing immigration laws and securing the country from the beginning, and until recently, it was a fairly bipartisan issue.

Democrat superstar President Obama holds the record for most deportations during his tenure in office, clocking in at a whopping 3,066,457 people over his eight years in office. This compares to the 551,449 people removed during Trump's first term. Obama isn't an anomaly either, President Clinton deported 865,646 people during his eight years, still toping Trump's numbers by a considerable margin.

The left's sudden aversion to deportations is clearly reactionary propaganda aimed at villainizing Trump.

2. Exploitative Labor

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Commentators on the left have insinuated that President Trump's deportation plan would endanger the agricultural industry due to the large portion of agricultural workers in the U.S. who are illegal aliens. If they are deported, food prices will skyrocket.

What the left is conveniently forgetting is the reason why many businesses choose to hire illegal immigrants (here's a hint: it's not because legal Americans aren't willing to do the work). It's because it is way easier to exploit people who are here illegally. Farmowners don't have to pay taxes on illegal aliens, pay minimum wage, offer benefits, sign contracts, or do any of the other typical requirements that protect the rights of the worker.

The left has shown their hand. This was never about some high-minded ideals of "diversity" and "inclusion." It's about cheap, expendable labor and a captive voter base to bolster their party in elections.

3."Undesirable" Jobs

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Another common talking point amid the left-wing anti-Trump hysteria is that illegal aliens take "undesirable" jobs that Americans will not do. The argument is that these people fill the "bottom tier" in the U.S. economy, jobs they consider "unfit" for American citizens.

By their logic, we should allow hordes of undocumented, unvetted immigrants into the country so they can work the jobs that the out-of-touch liberal talking heads consider beneath them. It's no wonder why they lost the election.

Did the Left lay the foundations for election denial?

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Did Glenn predict the future?

Just a few days after the election and President Trump's historic victory, the New York Times published a noteworthy article titled "How Russia Openly Escalated Its Election Interference Efforts," in which they made some interesting suggestions. They brought up several examples of Russian election interference (stop me if you think you've heard this one before) that favored Trump. From there, they delicately approached the "election denial zone" with the following statement:

"What impact Russia’s information campaign had on the outcome of this year’s race, if any, remains uncertain"

Is anyone else getting 2016 flashbacks?

It doesn't end there. About two weeks before the election (October 23rd), Glenn and Justin Haskins, the co-author of Glenn's new book, Propaganda Wars, discuss a frightening pattern they were observing in the news cycle at the time, and it bears a striking similarity to this New York Times piece. To gain a full appreciation of this situation, let's go back to two weeks before the election when Glenn and Justin laid out this scene:

Bad Eggs in the Intelligence Community

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This story begins with a top-secret military intelligence leak. Over the October 19th weekend, someone within the U.S. Government's intelligence agencies leaked classified information regarding the Israeli military and their upcoming plans to Iran. The man responsible for this leak, Asif William Rahman, a CIA official with top security clearance, was arrested on Tuesday, November 12th.

Rahman is one of the known "bad eggs" within our intelligence community. Glenn and Justin highlighted another, a man named Robert Malley. Malley is an Iranian envoy who works at the State Department under the Biden/Harris administration and is under investigation by the FBI for mishandling classified information. While Malley was quietly placed on leave in June, he has yet to be fired and still holds security clearance.

Another suspicious figure is Ariane Tabatabai, a former aide of Mr. Malley and a confirmed Iranian agent. According to a leak by Semafor, Tabatabai was revealed to be a willing participant in an Iranian covert influence campaign run by Tehran's Foreign Ministry. Despite this shocking revelation that an Iranian agent was in the Pentagon with access to top-secret information, Tabatabai has not faced any charges or inquires, nor has she been stripped of her job or clearance.

If these are the bad actors we know about, imagine how many are unknown to the public or are flying under the radar. In short, our intelligence agencies are full of people whose goals do not align with American security.

Conspicuous Russian Misinformation

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The story continues with a video of a man accusing former VP candidate and Minnesota Governor, Tim Walz of sexual assault. The man alleged to be Matthew Metro, a former student of Walz claimed that he was assaulted by the Governor while in High School. The man in the video gave corroborating details that made the claim seem credible on the surface, and it quickly spread across the internet. But after some deeper investigation, it was revealed this man wasnot Matthew Metro and that the entire video was fake. This caught the attention of the Security Director of National Intelligence who claimed the video was a Russian hoax designed to wound the Harris/Walz campaign, and the rest of the intelligence community quickly agreed.

In the same vein, the State Department put out a $10 million bountyto find the identity of the head of the Russian-owned media company Rybar. According to the State Department, Rybar manages several social media channels that promote Russian governmental political interests targeted at Trump supporters. The content Rybar posts is directed into pro-Trump, and pro-Republican channels, and the content apparently has a pro-Trump spin, alongside its pro-Russia objectives.

Why Does the Intelligence Community Care?

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So what's the deal? Yes, Russia was trying to interfere with the election, but this is a well-known issue that has unfortunately become commonplace in our recent elections.

The real concern is the intelligence community's uncharacteristically enthusiastic and fast response. Where was this response in 2016, when Hillary Clinton and the Democrats spent months lying about Donald Trump's "collusion" with Russia? It has since been proven that the FIB knew the entire story was a Clinton campaign fabrication, and they not only kept quiet about it, but they even played along. Or what about in 2020 when the Left tried to shut down the Hunter Biden laptop story for months by calling it a Russian hoax, only for it to turn out to be true?

Between all the bad actors in the intelligence community and their demonstrated repeated trustworthiness, this sudden concern with "Russian disinformation" that happened to support Trump was just too convenient.

Laying the Foundations for Election Denial

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This is when Glenn and Justin make a startling prediction: the Left was preparing for a potential Trump victory (remember, this was two weeks before the election) so they would have something to delegitimize him with. They were painting Trump as Putin's lapdog who was receiving election assistance in the form of misinformation from the Kremlin by sounding the alarm on these cherry-picked (and in the grand scheme of things, tame) examples of Russian propaganda. They were laying the foundation of the Left's effort to resist and delegitimize a President-elect Trump.

Glenn and Justin had no idea how right they were.

Trump's POWERFUL 10-point plan to TEAR DOWN the Deep State

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Since 2016 President Trump has promised to drain the swamp, but with Trump's new ten-point plan, do we finally have a solid roadmap to dismantle the deep state?

In March 2023, President Trump released a video detailing his plan to shatter the deep state. Now that he is the President-Elect, this plan is slated to launch in January 2025. Recently, Glenn reviewed Trump's plan and was optimistic about what he saw. In fact, he couldn't see how anyone could be against it (not that anything will stop the mainstream media from spinning it in a negative light).

But don't let Glenn tell you what to think! Check out Trump's FULL plan below:

1. Remove rouge bureaucrats

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Trump's first order of business will be to restore an executive order he issued in 2020 that allowed him to remove rouge bureaucrats. Trump promises to use this power aggressively eliminate corruption.

2. Clean and overhaul the intelligence apparatus

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Next, Trump promises to oust corrupt individuals from the national intelligence apparatus. This includes federal bureaucracies like the CIA, NSA, and other agencies that have been weaponized against the left's political opponents.

3. Reform FISA courts 

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Trump's next promise is to reform the FISA courts, which are courts tasked with reviewing and approving requests to gather foreign intelligence, typically through surveillance. These courts have been unaccountable to protections like the 4th Amendment that prohibits the government from unwarranted surveillance, resulting in severe government overreach on American citizens, both on US soil and abroad.

4. Expose the deep state. 

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Trump want to establish a "Truth and Reconciliation" commission that will be tasked with unmasking the deep state. This will be accomplished by publishing and declassifying all documents on deep state spying, corruption, and censorship.

5. Crackdown on government-media collusion

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Next, Trump will crack down on government "leakers" who collaborate with the mainstream media to spread misinformation. These collaborators purposefully interject false narratives that derail the democratic process within the country. The plan will also prohibit government actors from pressuring social media to censor content that goes against a particular political narrative, as was done, for example, in the case of the Biden administration pressuring Facebook to crack down on Hunter Biden laptop-related content.

6. Isolate inspector generals

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Trump promises to physically separate every inspector general from the department they are tasked with overseeing. This way, they don't become entangled with the department and end up protecting them instead of scrutinizing them.

7. Create a system to monitor the intelligence agencies

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To ensure that the intelligence agencies are no longer spying on American citizens, Trump proposed to create an independent auditing system. This auditing system, created by Congress, would keep the intelligence agencies in check from spying on American citizens or political campaigns as they did on Trump's campaign.

8. Relocate the federal bureaucracy

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Relocating the federal bureaucracy, Trump argues, will keep the internal politics of the individual bureaucracies out of the influence of DC. He says he will begin by relocating the Bureau of Land Management to Colorado.

9. Ban federal bureaucrats from taking corporate jobs

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To keep money ties out of politics, Trump proposes that federal bureaucrats should be banned from working at the companies that they are regulating. American taxpayer dollars should not go to agencies run by bureaucrats who cut special deals for corporations, who will later offer them a cushy role and a huge paycheck.

10. Push for congressional term limits

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Finally, Trump wants to make a constitutional amendment placing term limits on members of Congress. This proposal has been popular on both sides of the political aisle for a while, preventing members of Congress from becoming swamp creatures like Nancy Pelosi who was just re-elected for her 19th term.

The Democrats are turning on Biden

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The election is over, Kamala Harris has officially conceded, and now the Democrats are doing some serious soul-searching.

After reflecting long and hard (approximately 24 hours), the Democrats have discovered the real reason Harris lost the election. Was it Trump's excellent campaign that resonated with voters? Was it Harris's off-putting personality? Or was it her failure to distinguish herself from the Biden administration's failed policies?

No, it was Joe Biden. All the blame lies on President Biden's shoulders. The Left sees no need to take any real responsibility for the landslide defeat the Democrats suffered earlier this week; just pass the blame on to 'ole Joe.

Here are the leading excuses the Left is spinning up to explain Harris's crushing defeat:

"Biden should have dropped out sooner."

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This is the crux of the left-wing media's argument against Biden. They claim that if Joe Biden had dropped out earlier, Harris would have had more time to campaign and would not have had to carry around the baggage of Biden's abysmal debate performance. This could make sense, but what these commentators are conveniently forgetting are the years of propaganda these very same people promoted arguing that Biden's declining mental acuity was nothing more than a right-wing conspiracy theory. If Biden had been as sharp as they had told us, why would he have dropped out?

Also, if a lack of time was Harris's biggest issue this election, she sure didn't act like it. She was practically in hiding for the first several weeks of her campaign and she took plenty of days off, including during the last few crucial weeks. More time wouldn't have helped her case.

"Harris failed to distance herself from Biden."

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This is media gaslighting at its finest. Yes, Harris failed to distance herself from Biden. However, that's because she, along with the rest of the Left, publically went on record defending Biden's policies and his mental acuity. By the time Harris became the nominee, she had already said too much in favor of Biden. Don't forget Harris's infamous “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” quote after being asked on The View if she would do anything differently than Biden. In a way, Harris couldn't separate herself from Biden without drawing attention to the greatest flaw in her campaign: if she knew how to fix the country, why hasn't she?

"Harris did the best anyone could have done in that situation."

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But did she really? As mentioned earlier, she was noticeably absent for much of the campaign. While Trump was busy jumping into interviews, events, and rallies non-stop, Harris was MIA. Whenever Harris did manage to make an appearance, it almost always did more harm than good by highlighting her lack of a robust policy platform and her inability to string together a coherent sentence. Notable examples include her aforementioned appearance on The View and her disastrous interview on Fox News with Bret Baier. The point is, even considering the limited time to campaign she had, Kamala Harris wasnot the best person for the job and there are undoubtedly many other Democrats who would have run a much more successful campaign.