Former Vice President Harris said on Thursday that any checks and balances to hold back President Trump have not worked.
On tour to promote her new book about her campaign, “107 Days,” Harris spoke with journalist and podcaster Kara Swisher at the Warner Theatre to a sold-out audience.
“The point is that the guardrails have failed, for the most part,” Harris said. “Except one, which is the people and the power of God.”
“So right now, in this moment, if the Supreme Court isn’t a guardrail … what is, from a legal point of view, the guardrail that you see?” Harris continued. “Just the people.”
Harris called congressional Republicans “complicit” and said they “know what is wrong and [are] not stepping up.” Instead of “speaking up,” Republicans are “living in fear of retribution and are more invested in their own political survival than speaking up and taking the hits that may come.”
During her conversation, Harris praised congressional Democrats for defending Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies that could expire at the end of the year. This prompted the fight with Republicans that led to the government shutdown that’s about to enter its tenth day.
“I know there are plenty of Republicans who know this is wrong, but they’re not stepping up,” she said.
Harris said she was “very candid with all the friends here — I don’t know that it won’t get worse before it gets better … . Everyday, something happens.”
To this point, Harris criticized New York Attorney General Letitia James’s (D) indictment and angrily slammed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s claim at a cabinet meeting on Thursday that boys who were circumcised were more likely to have autism.
“My mother was an adviser at [the National Institutes of Health (NIH)], and she would leave us in the Bay Area to go to NIH, to work with scientists, who have as their goal to alleviate pain and to uplift the human condition,” Harris said.
Turning to “what these people are doing right now, to end the war on cancer, to deny science and fire scientists,” Harris called it “personal for me.”
On Kennedy’s circumcision claim, Harris said, “It’s weird. It’s f—ed up.”
“I don’t have the solution right now to how it stops before the end of his term,” Harris said. “But I know that we have to fight.”
“We have to fight,” the former presidential candidate continued. “We have to stay strong. We cannot get used to this. We cannot be overwhelmed, we cannot be silenced.”
Harris briefly addressed “something the other day that apparently went viral,” which was met with laughs. While on her book tour, she stopped at The Getty Center in Los Angeles on Monday, where she talked about how “there is so much about this moment that is trying to make people feel like they’ve lost their minds, when in fact, these mothaf—as are crazy!”
The comment was met with laughter and applause from the audience, as Harris began to laugh herself.
