Gabbard says Harris is ‘not to be underestimated’ on debate stage

Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii)—who ran for president as a Democrat in 2020 but has since left the party—said Vice President Harris is “not to be underestimated” on the debate stage this month when she will face off against former President Trump.

“I think Kamala Harris has a lot of experience. She is not to be underestimated,” Gabbard said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” when asked about Harris’s campaign team calling Trump a “formidable opponent” and asked whether she sees the Democratic candidate the same way.

Gabbard, who has been huddling with the GOP presidential candidate in recent weeks in his debate prep, said the upcoming debate “will be an opportunity for voters” to compare records of the current and former administrations. 

“President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have very different records. This is a unique situation where we have two candidates who have served at the highest offices in the land, President Trump four years as president, Kamala Harris now almost four years as Vice President, working alongside President Biden,” she continued.

Gabbard endorsed Trump’s 2024 presidential bid on Monday, making the announcement at a National Guard Association gathering in Michigan where Trump was also speaking.

Gabbard ran an unsuccessful presidential campaign in the Democratic primary in 2020. In the years since ending her bid, she has exited Congress, left the Democratic Party and appeared at events such as the Conservative Political Action Conference. She has become a regular presence in conservative media.

Arguably the most notable moment of Gabbard’s unsuccessful 2020 White House bid was when she attacked Harris on the debate stage over her record as a prosecutor.

“If I can be helpful to President Trump in any way, it really is just in sharing experience that I had with her on that debate stage in 2020,” Gabbard said in the interview, “and frankly, helping to point out some ways that Kamala Harris has already shown that she is trying to move away from her record, move away from her positions, and how that contradicts the positions and statements that she is making now that she is the Democratic nominee.”

The Harris campaign shot back against attacks about the vice president changing her position on some issues, noting that she addressed the changes in her recent CNN interview and noting that Trump has, too, changed his mind on several issues.

“On issue after issue, Trump is saying one thing after having done another,” a memo from the Harris administration said on Saturday, pointing to issues including child tax credits, IVF and marijuana legalization.

“Donald Trump has a long, nearly ten-year record as a presidential candidate, president, and now a presidential candidate again. With his back against the wall, he is suddenly pretending to be a completely different candidate, desperately attempting to memory-hole his past positions and rhetoric. It won’t work. Voters will see right through Trump’s lies over the next 66 days,” the memo added. “Trump must be held accountable for his brazen flip-flops wholly at odds with how he governed as president.”