Vice President Kamala Harris said the public should no longer use the terms "radical Islamic terrorism" and "illegal alien" during a speech she gave at a Los Angeles mosque in July 2016.
"We must have the courage to object when they use that term, ‘radical Islamic terrorism,’ which ignores how Muslims have overwhelmingly been the greatest victims of terror," she told the crowd at the Islamic Center of Southern California. "We must also have the courage to reject the term ‘illegal alien.’"
Harris’s remarks, which are available on her Facebook page, are yet another example of her history as one of the most left-wing lawmakers in the Senate as well as a potential electoral liability. Her failed 2020 presidential campaign was predicated on the idea that she was a more palatable alternative to socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.).
The result was Harris staking out far-left positions such as abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, endorsing "Medicare for All," and applauding cities that slashed the budgets of their police departments. Harris’s comments about Islamic terrorism came well before she threw her hat into the presidential ring, but nonetheless give a window into how she may govern in the White House.
"We must have the courage to stand up. And here’s why it is so important to stand up: Words have meaning," she told the crowd. "As a life-long prosecutor, I have seen the relationship between speech and action on an almost constant basis."
Much of Harris’s speech focused on combating Islamophobia and other prejudices. A more liberal immigration policy, Harris said, is consistent with "the spirit of Ramadan."
"There are two definitions of what it means to be a patriot. There is the definition that suggests you defend your country whatever it does, and then there is the kind of patriot that I believe us all to be: the kind that will fight each and every day for the ideals of our country."
Just three days before Harris's speech, ISIS carried out a suicide bombing in Baghdad that killed more than 300 people. Two weeks later, a man drove a truck through a crowd in Nice, France, killing more than 80 people. The Islamic terrorist group said the perpetrator answered its "calls to target citizens of coalition nations that fight the Islamic State."