Kathrine Frich
She predicted nearly everything about President Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
Losing an election gives a politician plenty of time to watch from the sidelines.
Even when former leaders feel their warnings came true, watching old rivals take over can still bring big surprises.
On Tuesday, one detail about Washington power players stood out above the rest.
Bending the knee
Former Vice President Kamala Harris says she predicted nearly everything about President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, except how fast elite figures would cave in.
Speaking on Keke Palmer’s show on Tuesday, she admitted that what she “had not anticipated was the capitulation” of influential leaders, according to HuffPost.
During the chat, Harris took aim at heavyweights who stay silent while watching moves that hurt the country.
“The number of powerful people who have stood quietly by in the face of what they know to be corruption and behavior and approaches that are contrary to the best interest of our country, the powerful people who you know bend the knee at the foot of a tyrant. I hadn’t anticipated that that was going to happen, to the degree it has,” she told Palmer.
Those comments come as everyday voters sour on Trump over the economy and the war in Iran. According to a survey from The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, almost two-thirds of Americans think the president acted illegally or unethically to make money from the presidency.
Even so, HuffPost noted that tech billionaires like Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, who led the Department of Government Efficiency, have kept backing him.
Looking out for themselves
Watching those elites cozy up to the White House changed how Harris views the people at the top. She told Palmer she has “come to realize that there are some people, and in particular among some of the most powerful, who are purely transactional.”
“They’re not pretending to be guided by what’s morally right, or what’s value based, or what’s principled. They’re in it to get what they can get out of it,” Harris explained on the show.
“They’re in it to get theirs. ‘I’m gonna get mine. When it stops producing for me, I’ll move on.’ And that is part of what we have seen, and what I didn’t see that coming to the extent that we’ve seen it happen. I have to admit.”
Rather than giving up over “failures of the system,” she urged ordinary citizens to copy that playbook and act as “transactional voters” at the ballot box, HuffPost reported.
“There are a lot of things that have worked, but there are many things that have not. But in your disappointment, don’t take yourself out of the game by not voting because you’re literally… you’re being silenced,” she told Palmer, adding, “And this is not a moment where we can afford to be passive.”
