Rep. Tulsi Gabbard on Thursday said fellow 2020 presidential hopeful Sen. Kamala D. Harris isn’t giving answers on her past prosecutorial record and that Ms. Harris is resorting to “smear” attacks to try to tear down the Hawaii congresswoman.
“She didn’t give any answers — not just to me, but to the American people,” Ms. Gabbard said on CNN. “In the interviews she had after the debate, she again refused to address this record that she had as attorney general that she claims to be so proud of.”
“This isn’t personal — it’s really about making sure that the American people have the truth, because that’s what this process is all about,” she said.
“The only response that I’ve heard her and her campaign is to push out smear attacks on me, claim that I am somehow some kind of foreign agent or a traitor to my country — the country that I love, the country that I put my life on the line to serve, the country that I still serve today as a soldier in the Army National Guard,” Ms. Gabbard said.
During Wednesday’s Democratic presidential debate, Ms. Gabbard had gone after Ms. Harris, a former attorney general of California and district attorney of San Francisco, and accused her of blocking evidence that could have freed someone from death row and keeping people locked up beyond their sentences for “cheap labor.”
“She put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana,” Ms. Gabbard said at the debate.
Immediately after the debate, Ms. Harris called herself a “top-tier” candidate and dismissed Ms. Gabbard as a low-polling “apologist” for Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.
On Thursday morning, Ms. Harris said on CNN that she’s very proud of the work that she did and that she worked to reform the criminal justice system in California.
“Am I going to take hits? Of course, incoming, there are going to be hits on a debate stage when people are trying to, you know, make a name for themselves,” she said.
Ms. Gabbard, who met with Mr. Assad in Syria in 2017, called him a “brutal dictator” on Thursday.
“Just like Saddam Hussein. Just like Gadhafi in Libya,” she said.
“The reason that I’m so outspoken on this issue of ending these wasteful regime-change wars is because I have seen firsthand this high human cost of war and the impact that it has on my fellow brothers and sisters in uniform,” Ms. Gabbard said. “I will do anything and everything that I possibly can to stop sending our men and women in uniform into harm’s way, fighting in these wasteful, counterproductive wars.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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