In preparation for his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Donald Trump has sought out the help of right-wing convert Tulsi Gabbard, who was able to best Harris during a 2019 presidential debate.
Trump’s method of preparing for a debate by only talking to people who agree with him has apparently continued, as he has added the former U.S. representative from Hawaii to his roster of friends for so-called “policy talks” in advance of his upcoming debate next month, according to The New York Times . Others he’s enlisted to help with debate prep in the past include MAGA Representative Matt Gaetz and his running mate J.D. Vance.
Trump’s spokesperson Karoline Leavitt confirmed Gabbard’s involvement in an email to the Times.
Since her failed presidential run in 2020, Gabbard has left the Democratic Party and become something of a conservative celebrity, elevating transphobia , spreading Russian propaganda , and unsuccessfully endorsing Republicans.
But Trump may have tapped her for a very specific reason: she may know how to beat Harris in a debate. During the July 2019 presidential debate on CNN, Gabbard went out of her way to go after Harris’s prosecutorial record, issuing a devastating blow to the then-senator’s presidential run.
Harris “put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations, and then laughed about it, when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana,” Gabbard said at the time. “She blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row, until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California, and she fought to keep cash bail system in place—that impacts poor people in the worst kind of way.”
Harris responded saying that she was proud of her record, and “proud of making a decision to not just give fancy speeches, or be in a legislative body and give speeches on the floor, but actually doing the work.” Harris also said she’d hoped to legalize marijuana.
Gabbard insisted that Harris had blocked evidence in a death row case. Gabbard was referring to the case of Kevin Cooper, a man who maintained his innocence on death row for 39 years before he was released. In 2016, while Harris was running for Senate, Cooper’s attorneys asked for new DNA testing, which they were confident would exonerate him. Harris’s office refused to allow the testing, and later said that she had not been involved in the decision.
Onstage, Gabbard said that Harris owed an apology to those who suffered under her “reign” as California’s attorney general. Harris appeared incredulous over Gabbard’s line of attack, and said she had always opposed the death penalty.
“My entire career, I have been opposed, personally opposed, to the death penalty, and that has never changed,” Harris said. “And I dare anybody who is in a position to make that decision to face the people I have faced and to say, ‘I will not seek the death penalty.’”
Harris has already gotten some heat from conservatives for her opposition to the death penalty, specifically over her decision in 2019 not to recommend the death penalty for a man who killed a police officer, despite a pressure campaign from several California Democrats and the officer’s widow. As a freshly elected district attorney, Harris kept to her campaign promise that she would not seek the death penalty.
While Trump’s team has made it clear he’s interested in going after her record as a district attorney and attorney general, it’s unlikely that Trump will reopen the death penalty issue with Harris the same way Gabbard did—especially considering the fact that Trump supports the death penalty, specifically for drug dealers.
Meanwhile, Project 2025, which outlines the beginning of the Trump presidency, urges the next administration to “ do everything possible to obtain finality ” for every prisoner on federal death row, which currently includes 40 people—executing them en masse.
Trump may hope that Gabbard can give him the edge to go face-to-face with Harris, something he has spent the better part of a month trying desperately to avoid. Amid the scheduling chaos and uncertainty, Trump’s team insisted Thursday that the former president had agreed to a whopping three debates, something no one asked for. Meanwhile, Harris’s team has agreed to the first on September 10 hosted by ABC, and if Trump appears, they will go from there.
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