Then-Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow in 2019 that then-President Donald Trump would be responsible for a dangerous escalation with Iran.
The video resurfaced Tuesday after Iran launched 181 ballistic missiles at Israel — the second such missile attack, after Iran’s proxies had attacked Israel for a year.
Harris spoke to Maddow in the wake of an Iranian missile attack on Saudi oil fields that, many expected, would lead to a U.S. response. (Trump called off an airstrike.) Harris criticized Trump for not being tough enough on the Saudis. (Once in office, she and Biden pulled back support for Saudi Arabia, emboldening Iran and the Houthis in Yemen.)
The transcript reads as follows:
HARRIS: And again, you know, listen, as far as I;m concerned, this president is motivated by his — his personal insecurities more than he is our national security. And so, what we’re looking at is, again, a threat that might be taken seriously. And I — and I would dare to say that that threat was issued without serious consultation with our allies, with our military leaders, with our diplomatic leaders. What are our alternatives?
Let’s also be clear, if this president is thinking about putting us in a position where we’re in a war with Iran, the consequences will be absolutely unacceptable and tragic in terms of the young men and women who are American soldiers who would be sent and deployed into something that was completely avoidable.
MADDOW: If you did believe, if you were president right now, and you came to believe that Iran had carried out this act — and, again, you know, we have the president’s assertions, the government’s assertions on these things, we haven’t seen the evidence. But if a U.S. president came to be convinced that Iran had shot these missiles into Saudi Arabia to screw up their oil output, would you approach that as if the United States had — the United States had a responsibility to backstop Saudi Arabia militarily? There’s an assumption that we would, but would that be true in a Harris administration?
HARRIS: Well, in a Harris administration, one, we wouldn’t have gotten ourselves into this mess in terms of we would — we would have stayed as part of the partnership that was part of the Iran nuclear deal, and we would have kept our word. And we would have held up our end of the bargain.
Also, let’s step back and look at this president’s relationship with the Saudis, and the Kingdom. Do you know that this president during his tenure in the White House has issued five vetoes total? Four of them related to Saudi Arabia.
In 2020, both then-candidate Joe Biden and Harris objected when President Trump ordered an airstrike that killed Iranian terror general Qasem Soleimani. Iran’s feeble response showed the regime had been deterred, and the dire predictions of many Democrats that Trump had started a new war failed to materialize.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
