Former Vice President Kamala Harris emerged from political hibernation to deliver a stern rebuke of President Trump — before bizarrely shifting focus to a lighthearted video of elephants at the San Diego Zoo during an earthquake.
“A lot of folks are wondering what’s going to guide us through this moment. How are we all going to figure out how to chart the course,” Harris said during her Wednesday address at Emerge’s 20th anniversary gala in San Francisco. “Please allow me, friends, to digress for a moment.”
“Okay, it’s kind of dark in here, but I’m ask[ing] for a show of hands — who saw that video from a couple of weeks ago the one of the elephants at the San Diego Zoo during the earthquake. Google it if you’ve not seen it,” she went on with a cackle.
Harris described how after they “felt the earth shaking beneath their feet,” elephants in the zoo “got in a circle and stood next to each other to protect the most vulnerable.”
“What a powerful metaphor,” she said. “Because we know those who try to incite fear are most effective when they divide and conquer, when they separate the herd, when they try to make everyone think they are alone.”
The light-hearted moment came in the middle of a speech that painted a dystopian view of America under Trump as her former 2024 foe marks his 100th day in office.
Earlier in the speech, she sternly ripped him for creating “the greatest man-made economic crisis in modern presidential history,” accusing him of a “wholesale abandonment” of American ideals and flirting with a constitutional crisis.
“Americans across the political spectrum who are declaring that the president’s reckless tariffs hurt workers and families by raising the cost of everyday essentials, devastate the retirement accounts that people spent a lifetime paying into, and paralyze American businesses, large and small,” Harris said.
The former vice president, who had until Wednesday largely refrained from uttering Trump’s name in public since her 2024 loss, also accused Trump of violating presidential norms.
“We here know that when the checks and balances ultimately collapse, if Congress fails to do its part, or if the courts fail to do their part, or if both do their part but the president defies them anyway … that is called a constitutional crisis,” she lamented.
She warned that such a crisis “will eventually impact everyone” and that the one recourse the public will have “is the voice of the people.”
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