Vice President Kamala Harris in another word salad-filled speech Tuesday urged young voters to stay engaged in politics as her 2024 opponent returns to the White House — her first extended public remarks since a concession speech to supporteres last month following her landslide loss.
“The true test of our commitment is whether in the face of an obstacle: Do we throw up our hands — or do we roll up our sleeves?” Harris, 60, said during a speech at Prince George’s County Community College in Maryland, before heavily implying the main impediment to her audience would be President-elect Donald Trump.
“And I ask you to remember the context in which you exist,” the vice president said, pausing slightly and then adding with a laugh, “Yeah, I did that. Uh-huh.”
“We must stay in the fight, every one of us,” she added to the students before walking off-stage to TLC’s song “No Scrubs” — in another possible diss of the incoming Republican president.
The comment on “context” was also similar to a word salad that caused the vice president to go viral while swearing in commissioners for the White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Hispanics in May 2023, when she referenced a quote from her mother about generational succession.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people, you think you just fell out of a coconut tree,” Harris said, erupting into wild cackle. “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what you came before you.”
Harris served up another word salad for the “young leaders” in the audience at the Tuesday event right before referencing her mother’s words of wisdom.
“You know, I do believe that public service is a noble calling. It is noble work and is — it is an expression of optimism which is, you know, and believe and it is being verified to each of you every day that the work you do that can lift people up has effect, it matters,” she said at another point to the gathered “young leaders” in the room.
“Your work is about the optimism that comes with knowing that one individual can make a difference in the lives of so many people,” she went on, in back-to-back word salads.
“My mother gave me a long time ago, she would say to me, Kamala, don’t just complain about what is wrong. Do something about it, make it right. That’s a life you all are living.”
The failed Democratic nominee, who referred to Trump, 78, during the presidential race as a “fascist” akin to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, also called on the students in attendance to be “guided by the ideals that have always defined us when we are at our best — dignity and decency, fairness, freedom.”
“It is not based on who you beat down, it’s based on who you lift up,” she claimed.
Elsewhere, Harris also hinted at remaining active in politics herself, days after President Biden told members of the Democratic National Committee at a holiday reception that she was “not going anywhere.”
“The United States of America itself would never have come to be if people had given up their cause after a court case or a battle or an election did not go their way,” Harris added Tuesday.
“I ask you to remember that this struggle is not new. It goes back nearly 250 years to Lexington and Concord generation after generation. It has been driven by those who love our country, cherish its ideals and refuse to sit passive while our ideals are under assault.”
The outgoing veep is expected to face a struggle for leadership of the Democratic Party if she seeks the presidential nomination in 2028 — with a half-dozen governors and others considered to be contenders.
The vice president was joined at the community college by Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, who is rumored to be one of those potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidates.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, another viable option is term-limited and will depart office after 2026, leaving Harris an opening to make a bid for the highest office in the Golden State.
