She was speaking at Howard University and bragging about going around her own office to provide “gender-affirming care” for transgender inmates.
“I was, as you are rightly pointing out, the attorney general of California for two terms. And I had a host of clients that I was obligated to defend and represent, and I couldn’t fire my clients. And there were, unfortunately, situations that occurred where my clients took positions that were contrary to my beliefs,” she said in the 2019 speech.
“And there—it was an office of a lot of people, who would do the work on a daily basis. And do I wish that sometimes they would have personally consulted me before they wrote the things that they wrote? Yes, I do. But the bottom line is, the buck stops with me, and I take full responsibility for what my office did. But on that issue, I will tell you, I vehemently disagree and, in fact, worked behind the scenes to ensure that the Department of Corrections would allow transitioning inmates to receive the medical attention that they required, they needed and deserved,” she said.
When Fox News host Bret Baier questioned her this week about her stance on taxpayer-funded surgeries for federal prisoners who identify as transgender, the vice president danced around it.
“This is a time when voters, especially here in Pennsylvania, are inundated with commercials and ads. They just want it to stop because it’s every commercial. But many of them add noise, but a few of them seem to break through. This particular one from the Trump campaign has gotten a lot of attention,” the journalist said before playing an ad from the former president’s campaign that claimed Harris supports “gender-affirming” surgery for transgender prisoners.
“So are you still in support of using taxpayer dollars to help prison inmates or detained illegal aliens to transition to another gender?” he said before the vice president pivoted to the former president, which became a common theme during the interview.
“I will follow the law and it’s a law that Donald Trump actually followed. You’re probably familiar with now it’s a public report that under Donald Trump’s administration, these surgeries were available to, on a medical necessity basis, to people in the federal prison system. And I think frankly, that ad from the Trump campaign is a little bit of like throwing stones when you’re living in a glass house,” she said.
“The Trump aides say that he never advocated for that prison policy and no gender transition surgeries happened during his presidency,” the interviewer said.
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“Well, you got to take responsibility for what happened in your administration,” she said as she has attempted to distance herself from much of what happened during the Biden and Harris administrations.
“Yeah, no surgeries happened in his presidency,” the Fox News host said. “Would you still advocate for using taxpayer dollars for gender reassignment surgeries?”
She continued to insist that she would “follow the law” the same as the former president/
“Like I said, I think it’s… He spent $20 million on those ads trying to create a sense of fear in the voters because he actually has no plan in this election that is about focusing on the needs of the American people. Whereas $20 million on that ad, on an issue that, as it relates to the biggest issues that affect the American people, it’s really quite remote. And again, his policy was no different. Look at where we are though,” she said.
