Kamala Harris blasts Trump policies in key speech after leaving office

Former Vice President Kamala Harris, in her sharpest remarks about President Trump since leaving office, blasted his policies as a dangerous betrayal of the nation’s founding principles and warned Wednesday of a looming constitutional crisis.

“Now I know tonight’s event happens to coincide with the 100 days after the inauguration,” she told about 500 people at a fundraising gala at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. “And I’ll leave it to others to give a full accounting of what has happened so far. But I will say this, instead of an administration working to advance America’s highest ideals, we are witnessing the wholesale abandonment of those ideals.”

The end result — cutting the size of government, privatizing services, giving tax breaks to the rich and slashing public education — predate Trump and are the outcome of decades-long efforts to reshape the nation’s norms and safety net, she said.

“It’s an agenda. A narrow, self-serving vision of America where they punish truth tellers, favor loyalists, cash in on their power, and leave everyone to fend for themselves,” Harris said. “All while abandoning allies and retreating from the world. And folks, what we are experiencing right now is exactly what they envision for America. Right now, we are living in their vision for America. But this is not a vision that Americans want.”

A Trump spokesman dismissed Harris’ remarks.

“A failed loser desperately clinging to relevance as she spirals into the political abyss,” White House spokesman Steven Cheung posted on X.

Harris’ roughly 15-minute speech at a fundraiser for Emerge, which focuses on electing female Democrats, comes amid mounting speculation about whether she will run for California governor in 2026 to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom. Harris has been criticized by top Democrats already in the race for not announcing her intentions thus far. Harris, 60, could forgo that race and instead decide to run for president for a third time in 2028.

Since losing the presidential election to Trump in November, Harris has appeared in public a few times but largely avoided wading into the political turmoil that has consumed the nation since she left office in January.

After conceding defeat in the presidential race, Harris spoke to students in the Maryland Corps service year program. Harris also made brief remarks after meeting with firefighters and volunteers in Altadena hours after attending Trump’s inauguration, taking in a Broadway show, accepting an award from the NAACP in February and making a surprise appearance at a national conference of Black female business and political leaders in Dana Point.

In those appearances, Harris spoke about the erosion of rights for minorities, women and the LGBTQ+ community under Trump, without mentioning him by name, and pledged to stay active in politics.

But Harris’ remarks Wednesday were her most pointed to date, taking place one day after Trump’s 100th day in office, in the city that launched her political career by electing her district attorney in 2003 and was her first stop in California after becoming the Democratic presidential nominee in 2024. Her speech was also the first time since leaving office that she’s publicly mentioned Trump by name.

Harris argued that citizens’ dissent is the strongest, most effective way to stop Trump’s policies.

“We all know, President Trump and his administration and their allies are counting on the notion that fear can be contagious. They are counting on the notion that if they can make some people afraid, it will have a chilling effect on others,” she said. “But what they’re overlooking, what they have overlooked, is that fear isn’t the only thing that’s contagious. Courage is contagious.”

She pointed to Americans’ protests over Trump policies that she said have created “the greatest man-made economic crisis in modern presidential history.” Such policies are raising the cost of living and sinking the value of retirement savings, threatening Social Security and the deportation of citizens and others without due process, she said.

“The courage of all these Americans inspires me,” Harris said.

Harris said she has been asked about what’s on her mind these days, and she pointed to the viral video of elephants at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park forming a circle to protect their calves during an earthquake this month.

“As soon as they felt the earth shaking beneath their feet, they got in a circle and stood next to each other to protect the most vulnerable,” she said. “Think about it, what a powerful metaphor.”

Harris said while some use fear to divide and conquer, the animals demonstrated the power of standing together.

“In the face of crisis, the lesson is, don’t scatter. The instinct has to be to immediately find and connect with each other and to know that the circle will be strong,” Harris said. “I am not here tonight to offer all the answers, but I am here to say this: You are not alone, and we are all in this together. And straight talk, things are probably going to get worse before they get better. But we are ready for it. We are not going to scatter. We are going to stand together.”