MSNBC host Joe Scarborough acknowledged on Friday that Vice President Kamala Harris’s statements during her 2020 campaign for the Democratic nomination are impacting her 2024 run.
Harris has distanced herself from several left-leaning positions she previously held on issues like health care, gun control, illegal immigration, and fracking. Scarborough noted that her current campaign has effectively addressed her past policy statements, but cautioned that she should be wary of ads that could influence voters, highlighting one that referenced her past support for taxpayer-funded sex reassignment surgeries for undocumented immigrants.
“By the way, just for people that are watching going, ‘Wait, how could they not, how could they not vote for Kamala Harris?’ What they’re seeing, and I saw it this weekend while I was watching football games, commercial after commercial after commercial after commercial of Kamala Harris in 2019 saying that she supported federal funding for transition operations,” Scarborough told “Morning Joe” panelist John Heilemann.
“Well, and they get quotes from her in 2019 where she was trying to be more woke than anybody else in 2019. And I think the campaign has done a good job cleaning a lot of that stuff up. They need to look at the commercials that are being run over and over and over again,” Scarborough continued.
In 2019, Harris stated to the American Civil Liberties Union that she would guarantee access to sex-change procedures for detained undocumented immigrants at the expense of taxpayers.
“I support policies ensuring that federal prisoners and detainees are able to obtain medically necessary care for gender transition, including surgical care, while incarcerated or detained,” she said. “Transition treatment is a medical necessity, and I will direct all federal agencies responsible for providing essential medical care to deliver transition treatment.”
Harris holds a 2.2% lead over former President Donald Trump in the RealClearPolitics average of polls from September 19 to October 2. However, her advantage narrows to 2% when surveys include Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein, independent candidate Cornel West, Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“Because again, it’s not you or me in Florida or New York that they need to worry about. It’s the guys in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, that are looking —” Scarborough said, before Heilemann interrupted with additional cities, “— who are watching sports on streaming channels.”
