The enthusiasm unleashed by Kamala Harris’s candidacy for the presidency has led her rival, Donald Trump, to lavish attacks on her. One of his favorites is to call her a “communist” without any basis, even using images generated by artificial intelligence. This Tuesday, at the Democratic convention, he was met with the response of a former Republican, Ana Navarro, whose parents fled Nicaragua and fled to the United States. The Latina compared Trump to the president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega; to the brothers Fidel and Raúl Castro, from Cuba, and to Nicolás Maduro, president of Venezuela, whom she identified as “communist dictators.”
“Donald Trump and his minions call Kamala a communist. I know communism. I fled communism in Nicaragua when I was eight years old. I don’t take it lightly,” said Navarro, 52, a political commentator on television who held several positions in the Republican Party apparatus and worked for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush but never supported Trump.
“Let me tell you what communist dictators do, and it’s never just for a day,” he said, in a clear allusion to when the former president said that if he won the elections he would be a dictator on the first day. “They attack the free press. They call them enemies of the people, like Ortega does in Nicaragua. They put their unqualified relatives in comfortable government positions so that they can enrich themselves from their positions like the Castros in Cuba, and they refuse to accept legitimate elections when they lose, and they call for violence to stay in power, like Maduro is doing right now in Venezuela,” he continued in his brief speech at the United Center, before the thousands of delegates and guests of the Democratic convention. “Now tell me something: Do any of those things sound familiar to you? Is there anyone running for president who reminds you of that? And I know one thing, it’s not Kamala Harris. That’s not America, the America we love. It’s not the land of the free,” he continued.
“We heard the president [Joe] Biden said he loves his job, but he loves his country more. All Americans must love our country more. Every American has a duty to put our country first, country first, before party. Country first, before political ambition,” he concluded his speech.
From believer to renegade
Democrats decided to give voice to some Republicans who disown Trump on Tuesday. The most notable intervention in this regard was that of Stephanie Grisham, former White House press secretary. Grisham said that at the time she was not just a supporter of Trump, but also a “true believer.” “I was one of his closest advisors. The Trump family became my family. I spent Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s at Mar-a-Lago,” she began by emphasizing before going on the attack.
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“I saw him when the cameras were off, behind closed doors. Trump mocks his supporters. He calls them basement dwellers,” she said, before explaining that on a visit to a hospital during the pandemic, while people were dying from Covid or in intensive care, the then president “was angry because the cameras weren’t on him.” “He has no empathy, no morals, no fidelity to the truth. He used to tell me: ‘It doesn’t matter what you say, Stephanie, say it enough and people will believe you. ‘ But it does matter: what you say matters, and what you don’t say matters, too,” she added.
Grisham said that on January 6, 2021, the day of the Capitol riot, she asked then-first lady Melania Trump if they could tweet that while “peaceful protest is the right of every American, there is no place for lawlessness or violence.” “She responded with one word: ‘No. ’ That day, I became the first senior staff member to resign. I could no longer be a part of the madness,” she said.
The former Republican recalled that she was attacked for not giving a single press conference during her time as spokesperson, from July 2019 to April 2020, when she moved to the first lady’s office. “It’s because, unlike my boss, I never wanted to get up on that podium and lie,” she justified herself. “Now I’m here behind a podium defending a Democrat, and that’s because I love my country more than my party. Kamala Harris tells the truth. She respects the American people and she has my vote,” she concluded, to the applause of the Democratic delegates.
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