Kamala Harris’ campaign website may still not feature any actual policies on it, but she is starting to float some ideas at her rallies. And it looks like the creativity is lacking for her first proposal.
Over the weekend, Harris proclaimed at an event in Las Vegas that she is going to “fight for working families” by increasing the minimum wage… and eliminating taxes on tips. If the ‘no tax on tips’ sounds familiar, it’s because Donald Trump has been campaigning on that promise for months.
On Monday’s show, Megyn was joined by Emily Jashinsky of UnHerd and Eliana Johnson of The Washington Free Beacon to discuss Harris’ lack of transparency on the policy front and why she is stealing from Trump.
‘No Tax on Tips’ Redux
The Harris-Walz campaign has been getting called out for not talking to the media and not putting forth any sort of policy platform. In an apparent effort to rectify the former, the vice president took questions from a couple reporters for a grand total of 71 seconds on Friday.
As for the latter, Harris used a campaign stop in Las Vegas on Saturday to ‘debut’ a socio-economic proposal. “When I am president, we will continue our fight for working families of America, including to raise the minimum wage and eliminate taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers,” Harris told the cheering crowd.
Sound familiar? That’s because you’ve been hearing it from the Trump campaign all summer. “She stole that from Trump, which he tweeted out and he was 100 percent right,” Megyn noted. “It was his proposal, he made it months ago, and he explained how he came up with the idea when he spoke at the Republican National Convention.”
Here’s what Trump said at the time:
TRUMP: We’re having dinner at a beautiful restaurant at the Trump building on the strip, and it’s a great building, and the waitress comes over. ‘How’s everything going?’ Really nice person… ‘Oh, sir, it’s so tough. The government’s after me all the time on tips, tips, tips.’ I said, ‘Well, if they give you cash would they be able to find it?’ She said, ‘Actually… very little cash is given. It’s all put right on the check. And they come in and they take so much of our money. It’s just ridiculous’… But I said to her, ‘Let me just ask you a question: Would you be happy if you had no tax on tips?’ She said, ‘What a great idea.’ I got my information from a very smart waitress. That’s better than spending millions of dollars. And everybody, everybody loves it – waitresses, and caddies, and drivers.
While Jashinsky said there is no way to know whether that is exactly how Trump formulated the idea, she said it sounds plausible and it is also great politics. “If he were a Democrat, one big storyline of this election would have been how he came up with that idea because it’s really brilliant and it’s a very powerful political narrative,” she said. “This goes a very, very long way towards appealing to working class voters who are hugely supportive of Donald Trump.”
Kamala Cribs
That is why, Jasinsky said, Harris is “cribbing” the policy proposal while speaking in a state like Nevada where it would be particularly popular. In Johnson’s view, it is telling that this is how Harris is starting to define her platform. “It’s quite interesting that this is the one specific policy proposal she has put out to date, and it is one of Trump’s policy proposals,” she said.
But it goes even deeper when you consider how voting demographics have shifted since Trump arrived on the political scent. “This proposal is aimed at the working class and these are the voters that the Democratic Party, over the past eight years, has been bleeding to the GOP,” she added. “So if you want to think about what Kamala Harris may try to do – and we’re supposed to see more economic policies from her this week – I think that’s the way to look at this.”
Megyn agreed and said the situation calls to mind a plot point from one of her favorite movies, Working Girl. “Melanie Griffith’s character [Tess McGill] was a secretary working for Sigourney Weaver [Katharine Parker], who then goes on some fancy vacation, breaks her leg, and gets laid up,” Megyn recounted. “Melanie tries to pose as her boss… and comes up with an idea while posing as the boss… that Mr. Trask [Philip Bosco] loved.”
As Megyn explained, Weaver’s character returns from her broken leg and tries to claim the idea as her own – expect Mr. Trask wasn’t buying it. “Ms. Parker is Kamala Harris,” Megyn concluded. “I’m sorry, but I nailed it. That is the perfect analogy for what we just saw.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Jashinsky and Johnson by tuning in to episode 859 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.