Kamala Harris Delivers Word Salad to Jamaican Prime Minister on Pandemic Recovery

US Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a press conference with Jamaicas Prime Minis
MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
Wendell Husebø

Vice President Kamala Harris delivered a speech alongside Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness on Wednesday in which she struggled to convey that the United States would be providing economic assistance to the island nation, confusedly saying, “One of the issues … that is economic in the way of its impact has been the pandemic.”

Speaking at the White House with Holness, Harris stated the U.S. would help repair the Jamaican economy, which was impacted by the Chinese pandemic. Her remarks were hard to follow and largely unclear, denoting consistent communication blunders that have beset Harris for months.

“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 while continually glancing at her notes.

“So to that end,” she said, seemingly trying to make sense of her notes, “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, uhhh, the issue of public health, but also the economy”:

Harris’s blunder on Wednesday is not an outlier. Just last week, the vice president rambled about the “significance of the passage of time” during a speech in Sunset, Louisiana. Harris mentioned the “significance of the passage of time” four times within 32 seconds:

During her trip to Poland two weeks ago, Harris seemed to have a difficult time reading her notes while expressing where she was exactly speaking.

“I am here, standing here on the northern flank, on the eastern flank, talking about what we have in terms of the eastern flank and our NATO allies, and what is at stake at this very moment, what is at stake this very moment are some of the guiding principles”:

Upon returning from Poland, Harris suggested Ukraine was a member of NATO. “The United States stands firmly with the Ukrainian people in defense of the NATO alliance,” Harris declared in what appears to be a now-deleted tweet.

In February, speaking about President Joe Biden’s agenda during 40-year-high Bidenflation, Harris told voters they “got what they asked for” because elections matter. “Because as we all know, elections matter. And when folks vote, they order what they want, and in this case, they got what they asked for”:

In January, Harris answered a question from NBC News about the White House coronavirus policy and if it would shift in the coming months.

“It is time for us to do what we have been doing. And that time is every day. Every day it is time for us to agree that there are things and tools that are available to us to slow this thing down,” Harris insisted without much specificity:

When NBC’s Lester Holt asked her in the summer of 2021 if she had traveled to the border to inspect Biden’s southern invasion, she replied, “And I haven’t been to Europe”:

The communication blunders come during and after multiple communication staffers have defected from Harris’s office. According to reports, her office has been tossed to and fro by “disorder, bad press, and, at times, internal frictions” because of Harris’s reported “abusive environment,” where staffers have been “treated like shit” and have had a slew of resignations and departures in recent months during political “shitshow” resets.

Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter and Gettr @WendellHusebø.

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