While Americans mark Thanksgiving, Republicans panned over Harris attack
An attack on Kamala Harris for buying expensive French cookware rebounded on the Republican party over Thanksgiving, moving social media users to compare the vice-presidentâs culinary outlay with the cost to taxpayers of Donald Trumpâs four years in power.
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On a visit to Paris earlier this month, Harris reportedly spent more than $500 on cookware at E Dehillerin, a shop near the Louvre museum. She told reporters she was making the purchase with Thanksgiving cooking in mind, prompting laughter when she said her husband, Doug Emhoff, was her âapprenticeâ in the kitchen.
Nonetheless, Republicans and rightwing 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 Twitter account, @GOP, said: âWhile Americans are struggling to pay more than EVER for the holidays, Kamala Harris is out buying a $375 pot.â
Thanks to the medium involved, responses were short and to the point.
Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at Georgetown, wrote: âJust to put this in perspective: What Harris spent her own money on for cookware wouldnât cover what Trump was charging taxpayers per room for Secret Service agents.â
Moynihan linked to a Washington Post report from February 2020, which said the Secret Service paid as much as $650 a night for rooms at Trump properties while Trump was president.
Many of those properties were golf courses. The journalist David Leavitt wrote: âWhile Americans lined up at food pantries and died from Covid, Trump spent $141m of taxpayerâs money playing golf.â
Trump famously criticised Barack Obama for playing too much golf, said he would be too busy to play much himself, then spent considerable time on the fairways. Estimates of the cost to taxpayers vary. One dedicated website, Trumpgolfcount.com, put it at $149m.
Other users responding to the GOP attack on Harris noted Trumpâs payment of $130,000 to the adult film actor and director Stormy Daniels, while he ran for president, to keep her quiet about an affair.
Republicans also criticised Joe Biden for spending the Thanksgiving holiday on Nantucket, an island off Massachussetts, at a house owned by David Rubenstein.
The private equity billionaire is an alumnus of the Carter White House and a philanthropist who has spent millions on preserving historic documents and buildings. Nonetheless, Bidenâs decision to stay at his $30m house attracted fire from the left as well as the right.
David Sirota, a former adviser to Bernie Sanders and a Guardian contributor, said: âItâs already very Let Them Eat Cake for a president to hang at a billionaireâs Nantucket pad â but itâs some real Gilded Age shit when the billionaireâs private equity firm has all sorts of interests before the government right now.â
In Washington before the holiday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki defended Bidenâs choice of destination and said: âYou are president no matter where you are.â
Back on Twitter, in the continuing fight over the vice-presidentâs pots and pans, the reporter Victoria Brownworth wrote: âWhile 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.â
As it happens, the 2017 tax cut was only the biggest corporate tax cut in history and the Republicans only sought to kick 23m Americans off healthcare, an effort thwarted by the Arizona senator John McCain.
But Brownworth wasnât done.
âAlso,â she wrote, âKamala Harris can buy whatever the heck she wants â itâs her money that she earned.â