Poor Kamala Harris. If this was her “highest moment” as vice president, then she will have achieved a truly pathetic record in office.
On Sunday, CNN political analyst Scott Jennings humiliatingly exposed Vice President Harris for claiming that a Florida high school curriculum contained inflammatory content suggesting that enslaved individuals somehow “benefited from slavery.”
Harris spoke in Jacksonville, Fla., on Saturday, saying, “Just yesterday in the state of Florida, they decided that high school students are going to be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery. They are insulting us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not stand for it.”
The new curriculum says, “Instruction includes how slaves developed skills that, in some cases, could be applied to their personal benefit.”
CNN political commentator Karen Finney praised Harris’ remarks, calling them a “stellar moment”.
“It was a stellar moment, and I think he did something that he’s done often in the last couple of years, which is at a time when something needed to be said, he came out and said it, and he really channeled what people were feeling. I mean, the idea that we would literally have a conversation — I have to laugh, it’s so disgusting that there was any kind of personal gain for slaves. It’s like saying women are happy when we couldn’t vote and we couldn’t have our own bank accounts . It’s just ridiculous,” he said.
Dana Bash, host of CNN’s “State of the Union,” asked Jennings to respond to calls from Democrats for Harris to increase her public visibility.
“Which is surprising to me [is] that little Kamala Harris apparently has to do so she can read something on Twitter one day and be on a plane the next day making something literally out of nothing,” he said. “This is a totally made up deal. I looked at the standards, I even looked at an analysis of the standards, in every instance where the word slavery or slave was used, I even read the statement of the African American scholars who wrote the standards, no [Florida Gov.] Ron DeSantis, but the scholars.”
“Everybody involved in this is saying it’s a completely made-up issue, and yet you look at how quickly Kamala Harris jumped on it. So the fact that this is her prime, a made-up thing, is pretty ridiculous,” Jennings continued.
As Gov. Ron DeSantis’ press secretary Jeremy Redfern noted Sunday, Dr. William B. Allen, one of the members of Florida’s African American History Standards Task Force, appeared on ABC News and blasted Harris’ claims as “categorically false.” His fuller comments, selectively edited for air by ABC News, show Harris invented the controversy.
Yesterday, @abcnews aired a very small section of their interview with a member of the Florida African American History Standards Task Force, Dr. William B. Allen.
Here’s more from the interview, where Dr. Allen refutes @VP’s narrative and calls her criticism “categorically false”.🧵 pic.twitter.com/hPFbKNZPs1
— Jeremy Redfern (@JeremyRedfernFL) July 23, 2023
“The only criticism I’ve found so far is one that was articulated by the vice president and that was a mistake, as I said in my response to the vice president, it was categorically false,” Dr. Allen said. “It was never said that slavery was beneficial to Africans. What was said, and anyone who reads it will see clearly, is the case that Africans proved resourceful, hardy and adaptable, and were able to develop skills and aptitudes, which served to their benefit, both while enslaved and after enslavement.”
Kamala Harris, whether out of ignorance or intellectual dishonesty, distorted Florida’s curriculum to continue to needlessly divide the nation by race. America must stop electing leaders who foster misunderstanding and keep us apart and instead promote the ideals of freedom, equality and unity of the nation.
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OPINION: This article contains comments that reflect the opinion of the author.