‘I’m not President of the United States!’: Kamala Harris finally claps back at pro-Palestinian protesters in DC

As former Vice President Kamala Harris continues her book tour of her recent memoir chronicling her loss to Donald Trump, “107 Days,” protesters aren’t shy about letting her know how they feel about the Biden-Harris administration’s inability to act decisively on the genocide in Gaza. However, according to a report from Harris, Harris showed at least one moment of her frustration with the protests mediaite.

While she was being interviewed in Washington, D.C., Harris responded to someone in the crowd who, among other things, shouted that the former vice president’s legacy on Gaza would always be genocide.

Harris responded, noting that there’s really nothing she can do now since she’s not the president of the United States.

“You know what, I’m not president of the United States! You want to go to the White House? And talk to him? Then go ahead and do that,” Harris joked.

The exchange reveals that while her book acknowledges her realization that failure to take a clearer position on Israeli actions in Gaza may have affected her election outcome, she has expressed frustration with protesters interrupting her book tour to express their opinions, a dynamic she has faced before.

The crowd was resolutely pro-Harris and burst into applause when Harris made her frustrations known to the protester or protesters in the crowd.

The protests, like Newsweek notes, do not take place in a vacuum. Similar protests occurred when Harris campaigned for president about what is seen as the Biden administration’s refusal to impose an arms embargo on Israel, as well as Palestinian groups withholding support from Harris because she continued to voice her support for Israel while the military continued to bomb Palestinian children and other vulnerable populations.

On the first night of her book tour in New York City, Harris showed compassion for the Palestinian people and condemned Trump for giving the Israeli government and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a blank check.

“What is happening to the Palestinian people is outrageous and it breaks my heart,” she told a packed performance center in New York City on September 25, after being interrupted by the first of four pro-Palestinian protesters. “Donald Trump has given (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu a blank check to do whatever he wants.”

She told the third protester, “I understand your concern and how you’re feeling – I think I do. And the reality is that where we are today didn’t have to be this way – in terms of the blank check that this president has given.”

Hardly any political issue has been more controversial than the Israeli government’s excessive response to the October 7, 2023, deaths of 1,200 civilians blamed on Hamas. Certainly a tragedy, but the starvation of Gazans and the deaths of at least 60,000 Palestinians, many of them women and children, are strongly condemned by the international communityexcept, of course, the United States.

In her book, she noted that “the war in Gaza is not a binary issue, but the conversations about it too often are. I wanted to acknowledge the complexity, nuance and history of the region, but it seemed that very few people had the appetite or the willingness to hold two tragic stories in their heads at the same time, to mourn both Israeli and Palestinian human suffering.” Harris wondered why the protests followed her and not Donald Trump on the campaign trail, and the answer, as Jeet Heer writes in a review for The nationcould lie in the subtext of her views on Gaza that she expresses in the book, even if that is the case she personally tried to influence Biden.

“Personal pleas for Biden to show some courage were simply an inadequate response to the killing fields of Gaza, which anyone with eyes could recognize as a genocide,” Heer wrote.

As for Harris’ joke of protesting Trump, the same group responsible for protesting her, CodePink, has did the same to his face when he showed up for dinner at Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak and Stone Crab restaurant in Washington, D.C., with Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and members of his security detail.

According to Time magazinedemonstrators can be heard on videos of the protest saying, “Trump, you are not welcome here,” followed by “free DC, free Palestine, Trump is the Hitler of our time.”

“He’s terrorizing communities all over the world, from Puerto Rico… from Palestine… to Venezuela, he’s terrorizing communities. He’s not welcome in DC, he’s not welcome in Palestine. Palestine is not for sale,” one protester shouted as they were escorted out by Trump’s security agents. “Shame on you all!”

RELATED CONTENT: Kamala Harris on the current political moment: ‘These motherfuckers are crazy’