Kamala Harris Rattles Off Trump-Defying Acts Like Kimmel’s Return As Signs Of Hope

Former Vice President Kamala Harris cited the return of Jimmy Kimmel among a list of acts defying President Donald Trump as she gave MSNBC host Rachel Maddow some encouraging signs for the resistance.

VP Harris stunned the political media world with surprisingly candid excerpts from the forthcoming campaign tome 107 Days, and has embarked on a media tour in support of the book. The title is a reference to the time elapsed between her ascension to the top of the ticket and her Election Day loss to now-President Donald Trump.

The ex-Veep was a guest on Monday night’s edition of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show for a wide-ranging interview that hit a lot of topics that are covered in the book, and some that aren’t.

In one exchange, Maddow asked about Trump’s efforts to go after “enemies” like Antifa, and VP Harris listed some positive signs, while still noting “it’s a scary time”:

MADDOW: We have also now, in an executive order today, having — we have got the president describing Antifa, the anti-fascist — it’s not even really a movement, the anti-fascist tactics of a portion of the protest movement as a domestic terrorist organization.

What is your reaction to those things? What do you think the appropriate response is to things like that?

HARRIS: Well, in normal times, we should and could expect that our courts would step in when asked to declare the legality or illegality of what the president is doing, because civics 101, we all know, we designed our democracy the three co-equal branches of government, the executive, the legislative and the courts, the judicial.

And I would like to believe that that is still something that is standing. Certainly, at the local level, you can see where the various courts have actually provided the guardrails against his abuse of power, against President Trump’s abuse of power. The lower courts have been more inclined to step up.

But my fear is that, as some of those cases reach the United States Supreme Court, that we can’t necessarily count on precedent to dictate how they will rule on the president’s power. And, again, Rachel, we talked about this during those 107 days, because, remember, the court before the election basically said that the president of the United States would be immune from whatever he did in office.

So he walked in to the White House with what he thinks is a blank check. And…

MADDOW: Specifically, in the Justice Department, that immunity ruling effectively told him he can direct the Justice Department to do whatever he wants, which he is now doing online, telling them to bring baseless prosecutions.

HARRIS: But there are a couple of things that have happened this week and every week. We should take note when they do, but one, again, we have talked about the response to the Kimmel suspension. But the other is that U.S. attorney who was appointed by the president, is a Republican, and said, I’m not doing it.

And as a former prosecutor, one of the things I know, whether people like it or not, is prosecutors, for the most part, especially if they have been doing it for a while, are apolitical and take seriously their oath to do justice without fear or favor and to do what they believe is the right thing to do based on the facts and the law.

And we have seen this week evidence of someone who I’m sure didn’t vote for me. And we may disagree on a whole lot of other stuff, but he had the courage to stand up and say he’s going to follow his oath and do what is ethically right. So let’s take heart and hope that others within the Department of Justice will see that that is — have a — have something that steers their conscience.

But, I mean, part — let’s not also be distracted by the fact that there are going to be the career people who understand that, but then Trump is appointing people to these positions who have no experience as a prosecutor, and the closest they have to it is their experience defending him against crimes, and are now sitting behind the desk making decisions about who should be charged with what.

So it is a scary time. I don’t mean to suggest otherwise. But there are these moments that we should also take note of.

MADDOW: Yes.

And there have been — to that point, there have been multiple Trump-appointed U.S. attorneys who have resigned or left office under…

(CROSSTALK)

HARRIS: Yes, they have. Yes, they have. Yes, they have.

Watch above via MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show.