An attack on US Vice President Kamala Harris for buying expensive French cookware rebounded on the Republican Party over Thanksgiving, moving social media users to compare Harris’ culinary outlay with the cost to taxpayers of former US president Donald Trump’s four years in power.
On a visit to Paris earlier this month, Harris reportedly spent more than US$500 on cookware at E. Dehillerin, a shop near the Louvre museum.
She told reporters that she was making the purchase with Thanksgiving cooking in mind, prompting laughter when she said that her husband, Doug Emhoff, was her “apprentice” in the kitchen.
Photo: Reuters
Nonetheless, Republicans and right-wing media outlets seized on the purchase, attempting to use it to show that the vice president, a former California attorney general and US senator, was out of touch with ordinary Americans.
On Friday, the Republican Party wrote on Twitter: “While Americans are struggling to pay more than EVER for the holidays, Kamala Harris is out buying a $375 pot.”
Thanks to the medium involved, responses were short and to the point.
Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University, wrote: “Just to put this in perspective: What Harris spent her own money on for cookware wouldn’t cover what Trump was charging taxpayers per room for Secret Service agents.”
Moynihan referred to a Washington Post report from February last year that said the US Secret Service paid as much as US$650 a night for rooms at properties owned by the then-president.
Many of those properties were golf courses.
Journalist David Leavitt wrote: “While Americans lined up at food pantries and died from Covid, Trump spent $141m of taxpayer’s money playing golf.”
Trump had famously criticized his predecessor, Barack Obama, for playing too much golf and said that as president, he would be too busy to play much himself, but then spent considerable time on the fairways when in office.
Estimates of the cost to taxpayers vary. One dedicated Web site, Trumpgolfcount.com, put it at US$149 million.
Other users responding to the Republican attack on Harris noted Trump’s payment of US$130,000 to adult film actress and director Stormy Daniels, while he ran for president, to keep her quiet about an alleged affair.
Republicans also criticized US President Joe Biden for spending the Thanksgiving holiday on Nantucket, an island off Massachussetts, at a house owned by billionaire businessman David Rubenstein.
Rubenstein had served as a deputy domestic policy advisor to former US-president Jimmy Carter and has spent millions of dollars on preserving historic documents and buildings.
Nonetheless, Biden’s decision to stay at his US$30 million house attracted fire from the left as well as the right.
David Sirota, a former adviser to US Senator Bernie Sanders and a Guardian contributor, said: “It’s already very Let Them Eat Cake for a president to hang at a billionaire’s Nantucket pad — but it’s some real Gilded Age shit when the billionaire’s private equity firm has all sorts of interests before the government right now.”
In Washington before the holiday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki defended Biden’s choice of destination and said: “You are president no matter where you are.”
Back on Twitter, in the continuing fight over the vice president’s pots and pans, reporter Victoria Brownworth wrote: “While Americans were struggling to pay more than EVER for the holidays, in
December 2017 Republicans voted themselves the biggest tax cut in history and kicked 23m Americans off healthcare.”
As it happens, the 2017 tax cut was only the biggest corporate tax cut in US history and the Republicans only sought to kick 23 million Americans off healthcare, an effort thwarted by the late US senator John McCain.
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS