Staff Reports
The fallout from the recent presidential debate is turning into a public relations nightmare for Kamala Harris, as her misstatement about the U.S. military continues to create waves, and not the kind she will want to surf on. During an exchange focused on the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, Harris claimed that there were no American service members currently stationed in a combat zone—a staggering assertion that turned out to be as accurate as a weather forecast in January. The ABC News moderators, in their typical fashion, failed to provide any fact-checking, leaving the military community to set the record straight.
Harris boldly proclaimed that, for the first time in a century, there were no U.S. troops engaged in active combat worldwide. Newsflash: this claim did not pass the sniff test. As it happens, there are currently about 900 personnel in Syria and 2,500 in Iraq, all under constant threat from enemy drones and missiles. Instead of reflecting on her failed assertion, Harris and her allies went back to peddling the tired narrative about Trump’s alleged shortcomings, hoping the public would forget her blunder along the way.
This is the greatest fact-check to ever exist. It will never get better than this. Savor it. pic.twitter.com/V6U6q4EF8t
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) September 14, 2024
On ABC’s “This Week,” things got even more cringe-worthy for Harris. During a segment with Governor Maura Healey, the moderator, Martha Raddatz, attempted to clarify Harris’s misguided claims, only to have Healey dive into a bizarre defense of the vice president’s lack of awareness. Healey’s rebuttal was steeped in the usual Democratic rhetoric about being a strong leader and supporting NATO, conveniently ignoring any evidence that might validate those claims—like the fact that supporting NATO often means holding other countries accountable for their military contributions, a task that Donald Trump was relentless about. But facts have little place in the defense of a Democrat these days.
As the conversation droned on, Healey insisted that Kamala Harris had demonstrated her capability to be commander-in-chief—though the only evidence put forth was a vague reference to her support of NATO and a comment about needing seriousness in leadership during “serious times.” But where’s the beef? There was not a single concrete example offered that substantiated Harris’s supposed credentials. Meanwhile, President Biden still occupies the Oval Office, completely overshadowing Harris’s ambition to step up.
In a rather transparent attempt to shift the spotlight, Healey attempted to paint Trump as a puppet of Vladimir Putin while repeating the long-debunked myth that Trump called military veterans “suckers and losers.” Even Snopes has pushed back against this narrative, but that doesn’t seem to matter to Democrats who consistently grasp at straws to undermine their opponents. They refuse to admit that Trump, who consistently championed veterans and military funding, is an ally to those who serve.
To top off this circus act, Raddatz seemed to struggle under the pressure of calling out the obvious dishonesty from Harris’s camp. Still, the bigger spectacle lies in the revelations from a whistleblower who claims that ABC News colluded with the Harris campaign to rig the debate against Trump. With implications like these, it’s little wonder that serious conversation about military respect and policy gets lost in the haze of political posturing and false narratives.
