Commentary writer Noah Rothman was immediately shut down by fellow guests on an MSNBC panel for correctly stating that Kamala Harris has come out in favor of bringing back busing.
Rothman, joined on a Monday morning panel by Princeton professor Eddie Glaude and Voto Latino president María Teresa Kumar, said Harris was playing a "risky game" by embracing busing during last Thursday's debate showdown with former vice president Joe Biden.
"It was a great moment of political theater on the debate stage that night, but this is a very risky game for Kamala Harris to play," Rothman said. "She has compelled herself to embrace busing, she has now come out in support of forced busing."
Both Glaude and Kumar interjected with "no she did not" after Rothman said Harris now supports busing, which she does.
"No she did not, that's not what she was saying," Kumar said. "What Harris was actually trying to say is like, you have to be very careful, was that states cannot be responsible for legislating these issues when it comes to race, because often times local officials and states themselves have been on the wrong side of history."
"It had nothing to do with busing, it had everything to do with who is legislating," Kumar said.
Kumar's nuanced interpretation of Harris's Thursday debate comments are undermined by comments she made over the weekend, when she came out in full support of bringing back the practice.
"I support busing," Harris told reporters Sunday, according to NBC reporter Vaughn Hillyard. "Listen, the schools of America are as segregated, if not more segregated today than when I was in elementary school, and we need to put every effort, including busing, into play to desegregate the schools."
Rothman argued that busing was a disastrous policy for any candidate to endorse.
"We don’t have polling on it this century because it’s a dead political issue, but it was among the most unpopular, most ineffective, counterproductive, failure-on-its-own-merits proposal that she has now embraced," Rothman said.
Glaude agreed with Rothman that "busing failed" as a policy.