Tulsi Gabbard Says Kamala Harris ‘Trained Like an Actress’ Ahead of Debate

Tulsi Gabbard believes Kamala Harris is pulling out all the stops in the lead-up to Tuesday night’s debate against Donald Trump, saying she believes the vice president intends to “act her way” through the remainder of the election.
Harris and Trump are set to face off on Tuesday night, in what is currently the only scheduled debate of the 2024 Presidential election. The ABC-hosted encounter will likely see Trump taking to task Harris’s record on immigration and inflation, with the vice president hoping to make her case to the American people and avoid the performance which led to President Joe Biden’s departure from the race.
“Kamala Harris is being trained like an actress—lights, cameras, memorized lines—so she can ‘win’ the debate and act her way through this election,” Gabbard posted to X on Tuesday. “But we’re not choosing the lead in a movie; we’re choosing our Commander-in-Chief.”
Gabbard, a former Representative for Hawaii and Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army, is now one of the most high-profile former Democrats to have endorsed Donald Trump in the 2024 election, and has been a harsh critic of Harris since prior to leaving the party in 2022.
Gabbard ran against Harris for the Democratic nomination in 2020, with footage of one of their debates during that year’s primaries recently reemerging in the buildup to Harris’ encounter with Trump.
During the July 2019 debate, Gabbard attacked Harris’ record as a district attorney in San Francisco, accusing her of imprisoning individuals for misdemeanor drug crimes despite joking about smoking Marijuana herself, and having “obstructed evidence that could have let an innocent man leave death row.”
Attached to Gabbard’s Tuesday post was a clip from a recent interview with Fox News, in which she warned that the vice president “is not to be underestimated,” and claimed that Harris was taking “extreme acting lessons” in preparation for Tuesday night.
“She’s locked herself in a hotel room, taking extreme acting lessons,” Gabbard told her interviewer, Jesse Watters. “She’s got Hollywood advisers, a stage, the Hollywood lights, in the hopes that her friends at ABC and the propaganda media will declare her the winner.”
Gabbard did not offer any evidence to support the claim that Harris is taking acting lessons or working with Hollywood advisers, and Newsweek has contacted Gabbard’s media team for further comment.
Trump, meanwhile, has reportedly employed Gabbard to prep him for Tuesday night’s encounter.
As reported by the New York Times in mid-August, citing unnamed sources with knowledge of Trump’s schedule, Trump “brought in the former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard to help sharpen his attacks in a recent practice session at his private club and home, Mar-a-Lago.”
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