Kamala Harris under fire for ‘incoherent’ speech at Highland Park shooting site

Kamala Harris has been criticized for her speech in Highland Park, Illinois, the Chicago suburb that was the site of an Independence Day massacre which took the lives of seven people.

The vice president made brief remarks during her visit on Tuesday, a day after the July 4th parade shooting in which more than 30 people were injured.

“We’ve got to take this stuff seriously, as seriously as you are because you have been forced to take this seriously,” she said.

“The whole nation should understand and have a level of empathy to understand that this could happen anywhere [to] any people in any community. And we should stand together and speak out about why it’s got to stop,” she added.

Pradheep Shanker, a contributor to the conservative magazine National Review tweeted: “She is amazingly bad at this.”

“Every new quote of hers makes less and less sense as a complete sentence,” baseball editor Whitney McIntosh added.

Writer Ashley Reese tweeted: “Okay, she did not always sound this incoherent when put on the spot, right? Am I misremembering? It’s getting weird.”

“Ok, I give up. There ARE some jobs where you shouldn’t be allowed to drink on the clock,” screenwriter Josh Olson joked.

“Don’t they have Obama’s speech writers on retainer or something, what’s up?” Edward Ongweso Jr tweeted.

Jackson Richman, a contributor to the conservative Washington Examiner, wrote: “Seriously, @VP doesn’t know how to speak.”

“She doesn’t have to be a great speaker, she just has to have something meaningful to say but she never does,” one Twitter user said.

“If you’re wondering why she sounds like this. It’s because Democrats default to noncommittal buzzword statements and they’ve finally run out of wiggle room. They have to actually do something or continue to sound like undergrads trying to hit a word minimum,” another added.

“This is Billy Madison Academic Decathlon level stuff. What a disaster,” a third said.

“Idly thinking of the 5-6 years spent by media and boosters to set Harris up as the next Obama when it turned out she was the next Dan Quayle,” Jake Cole tweeted.

“Every single 10 second ‘speech’ she gives feels like an excruciatingly long 2nd grade book report where it’s very obvious the student didn’t read a damn thing,” Ross Jutsu wrote.

Ms Harris has been criticized for rambling speeches and answers in the past, such as her remarks beside Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness in March.

“We also recognize just as it has been in the United States, for Jamaica, one of the issues that has been presented as an issue that is economic in the way of its impact has been the pandemic,” she said at the time. “So to that end, we are announcing today also that we will assist Jamaica in Covid recovery by assisting in terms of the recovery efforts in Jamaica that have been essential to, I believe, what is necessary to strengthen not only the issue of public health but also the economy.”

Also in March, she was asked on NBC’s Today why the US was still buying Russian oil despite their invasion of Ukraine.

“Let’s take this one step at a time, understanding that right now on the issue of energy, our allies have stood firm and unified in a way that many of the pundits didn’t predict would happen, to ensure that we are unified in our approach to this issue,” she told NBC News.

Ms Harris was also criticised for her simplistic answer concerning the conflict in a radio interview.

“Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine, so basically that’s wrong,” she said.