‘As a Black Woman…‘: CNN Commentator Takes Exception to Republican Guest Slamming Kamala Harris’ ‘Incompetence’
CNN political commentator Ashley Allison snapped at a fellow panelist on Tuesday after he criticized Vice President Kamala Harris’ “incompetence.”
During a discussion on The Situation Room about Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign, Republican strategist and former Trump administration official Matt Mowers said:
This is in a lot of ways the same campaign it was last week. It comes down to three I’s: immigration, inflation, incompetence. You have Kamala Harris, who’s the deciding vote for the Inflation Reduction Act that actually spent trillions of dollars causing inflation. She was Biden’s border czar when we’ve had record number of border crossings. And incompetent, she stood side-by-side with Joe Biden on every single foreign policy disaster we’ve had, including the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. She owns that record. That’s all Donald Trump has to talk about. The rest will take care of itself.
Allison shot back, “She’s not incompetent, okay? Like, you don’t become the attorney general of California or senator or the vice president of United States.”
She argued:
By calling her incompetent you’re calling the 81 million people who voted for her incompetent as well. But let me just say this, that is what we’re talking about. There is a way to attack her record on policy without calling her a name. Incompetent is an unflattering name, and when people do that to Black women, that is what Van is talking about. You might not agree, but as a Black woman, let me tell you how we hear it.
Mowers replied, “Well, you know who disagrees are the voters. The voters right now believe the Biden-Harris administration is one of the most incompetent administrations in American history. That’s not me, that’s the voters right now, and they’re not just saying about the vice president, they’re saying about everyone in the administration.”
CNN senior political commentator Van Jones then weighed in:
There’s a smart way and a dumb way to do anything. It’s a very dumb way to, after 400 years of this mistreatment of Black people and Black women, to say, “You’re incompetent.” Maybe that makes sense to you in your world and you wouldn’t take it that personally, but that has been the slur, that has been the core, that we are not worthy, we are not as smart, we are not as good, we can’t do stuff, and so when you have someone who’s overcome all of that again and again and again and again, and that’s the word you pick? Incompetent? I’m just gonna tell you, it’s not gonna work as well for you as you think it is.
Jones concluded, “People are going to crawl through broken glass to vote against the party who says that about a Black woman. Pick another word. Don’t pick that one.”
On Tuesday, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) introduced articles of impeachment against Harris, accusing the vice president of “extraordinary incompetence” with her handling of the southern border.
Watch above via CNN.
