There Goes VP Kamala Harris, Murdering The Troops By Not Saluting Them Again

More quality rightwing propaganda from Fox News.

We're just two months in to the Biden administration, and conservatives have already declared Vice President Kamala Harris a commie traitor who hates the troops. Evie Fordham at Fox News broke the story Tuesday.

Vice President Kamala Harris is facing criticism for appearing to break with precedent and failing to salute the honor guard when boarding Air Force Two.

Video reviewed by Fox News showed that her predecessors, former Vice President Mike Pence and President Biden, regularly saluted the honor guard in the same situation.

 IMPEACH THE WITCH! 

Vice President Dick Cheney was filmed not saluting military personnel in 2006, so this is not much of a precedent Harris is "breaking."

Fordham, by the way, appears to work the Kamala Harris hate beat. Her bylines from the past 24 hours include "VP Harris to speak at summit with ties to disgraced former Women's March leader" and "Kamala Harris' laughing answer to border question sparks backlash."

Her latest Pulitzer contender quotes military protocol experts Charlie Kirk from Turning Point USA and former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. 

DISGRACEFUL: @VP Kamala Harris refuses to salute the honor guard at the steps of the aircraft. It is a clear demons… https://t.co/LjIRE0EhBw

— Bernard B. Kerik (@Bernard B. Kerik) 1616465313.0 

Kerik is a convicted felon whom New York Judge Stephen Robinson (no relation) sentenced to four years in prison for tax fraud and obstruction. Harris is a former prosecutor who, unlike Kerik, has personally remained on the plaintiff side of legal proceedings.

Kerik tweeted:  

  Kamala Harris refuses to salute the honor guard at the steps of the aircraft. It is a clear demonstration of her dislike for those in uniform, both law-enforcement and military.

Wait, you're supposed to salute cops now? But my saluting hand is gun-shaped. It's like they want me to die.

Harris obviously doesn't dislike law enforcement, considering she was the chief law enforcement officer for the state of California. There's no evidence she was trying to pull a Louis DeJoy and destroy the institution from the inside. Kamala The Cop Who Hates Cops is a conservative fairy tale centered around Harris believing cops shouldn't freely execute Black people.

Harris's policy positions are also objectively pro-military, but why are we even fact-checking this garbage? Conservatives are trying to push this particular narrative after having gleefully supported the insurrectionist in chief, whose actual demonstrated contempt for the armed forces was front page news last year. 

Charlie Kirk tweeted:  

Kamala Harris doesn't salute members of the military as she gets on Air Force Two, breaking with a customary tradition of respect Remember when she and Joe Biden tried to sell the lie that *Trump* was the one who didn't respect the troops?

Harris and President Joe Biden didn't run on a “the other guy hates the troops" platform, because the GOP has patented that technique. Nor did they Jedi mind trick the previous White House occupant into dismissing dead US soldiers as “losers" andopenly mocking the late Senator John McCain's service during Vietnam, when President Bone Spurs was bravely fighting STDs .

The one-term loser also overruled military officials and pardoned war criminals (yes, the military is actually against that!), but seriously, we promised we weren't going to fact check all this. You know it's bullshit.

Fordham doesn't bother speaking to anyone from the actual military, just rightwing hacks, so her hit piece misses the critical detail that Harris is not required to salute anyone. As US Naval War College professor Tom Nichols noted, the vice president is a civilian position outside the chain of command.

The Commander in Chief returns salutes as a matter of courtesy (a practice started by Reagan), but the VP is a civi… https: //t.co/XLyF86UYIl

— Tom Nichols (@Tom Nichols) 1616557098.0 

Like union-busting and ignoring pandemics, civilians saluting military personnel is yet another lousy policy Ronald Reagan started. Here's the Gipper explaining his decision to US service members.

I was a second lieutenant of horse cavalry back in the World War II days. As I told the admiral, I wound up flying a desk for the Army Air Force. And so, I know all the rules about not saluting in civilian clothes and so forth, and when you should or shouldn't. But then when I got this job and I would be approaching Air Force One or Marine One and those Marines would come to a salute and I — knowing that I am in civilian clothes — I would nod and say hello and think they could drop their hand, and they wouldn't. They just stood there. So, one night over at the Marine Commandant's quarters in Washington, and I was getting a couple of highballs, and I didn't know what to do with them. So, I said to the Commandant, I said, 'Look, I know all the rules about saluting in civilian clothes and all, but if I am the Commander in Chief, there ought to be a regulation that would permit me to return a salute.' And I heard some words of wisdom. He said, 'I think if you did, no one would say anything.'

Wow. They really called this guy the Great Communicator.

This is America, not Cold War Cuba or the Soviet Union. The president and vice president are civilians, and civilians control the military not the other way around.

[ Fox News ]

  Follow Stephen Robinson on  Twitter.   

Looking for someone to give that cash to? Why not us?