OPINION:
The top Democratic candidates are experts at passing themselves off as something they’re not. The other day, Vice President Kamala Harris announced she had a plan to “eliminate taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers.”
It’s a blatant case of pilfering a winning idea from one’s opponent. Donald Trump has been running for the past several months on keeping the IRS away from the extra earnings of those who live from paycheck to paycheck waiting tables. The former president’s campaign website has been selling “Vote Trump for No Tax on Tips” decals to stick on restaurant bills.
There’s no such product on the Democratic campaign website, because there is nothing reflecting the stance of Ms. Harris on any relevant issue. The site instead features creatively embellished biographies of Mr. Walz and Ms. Harris, ways to donate and a merchandise store featuring body-positivity models in Harris-style attire.
Mr. Trump’s site, by contrast, highlights his “big ideas, bold ambitions and daring dreams for America’s future” with detailed information about what he intends to do about the border, crime, fighting drugs, rejecting globalism, reclaiming free speech, “draining the swamp” and reducing health care costs.
The former president’s website calls out Ms. Harris over her plagiarism. In a statement posted Saturday, Mr. Trump asks, “If she actually wants to end taxes on tips, why won’t she do it now, considering she’s part of the administration currently in charge?”
Two years ago, Ms. Harris did the opposite. She cast the tiebreaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which funded an unprecedented $45.6 billion expansion of IRS auditing capabilities, guaranteeing no tip would go untaxed.
In another example of the Democrats’ bait-and-switch, Ms. Harris just released a campaign ad portraying her as a stern, anti-crime prosecutor and touting her record on the border, saying: “Fixing the border is tough. So is Kamala Harris.”
If only that were true of our border czar, who bears direct responsibility for leaving our southern border open to an illegal invasion by 10 million foreigners.
She used to be proud of her open border stance. After winning a Senate seat representing California in 2016, Ms. Harris explained her agenda: “And during our campaign, I was a leading voice for increasing — not stopping — the number of asylum-seekers our country accepts from Syria and other war-torn countries.”
Open borders have been a disaster, and the public doesn’t want just anyone from around the world to waltz into the country unchallenged. That’s why Democratic campaign chiefs have ordered Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz to skip interviews, lest their true, hard-left agenda slip out under questioning.
That’s also why Ms. Harris has refused to talk for more than 60 seconds with the media since she was democratically installed as her party’s candidate by a small group of elites. Her appearances are limited to scripted events.
Mr. Trump, on the other hand, did a freewheeling interview with Elon Musk on X on Monday night. His running mate, J.D. Vance, just did three hostile Sunday talk show interviews. If anything, Mr. Trump can be a bit too eager to speak off-script, encouraging media partisans to twist his words in ways he never intended.
Americans shouldn’t be expected to approve the election of a mystery candidate. That means Ms. Harris shouldn’t be allowed to dodge the three of the presidential debates that have been proposed.
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