An anecdote making its way around the liberal media this week is shedding some new light on the seamier side of Vice President Kamala Harris’ rise to power in the Democratic Party.
It takes readers back to Harris’ life long before she became a national political figure — to when she was the “protege” (meaning “mistress”) of the powerful then-California state House Speaker Willie Brown.
And it ties her in personally embarrassing ways to the flamboyant business world of Donald Trump in the 1990s.
Brown’s relationship with the much-younger Harris has never been a secret. It took place in the early 1990s, and when they met, according to USA Today (not exactly a hotbed of right-wing conspiracies) Brown was 60 and married, Harris was 29.
According to a Politico piece published Wednesday by senior political columnist Jonathan Martin, Brown has a tale involving Harris from the early 1990s when Brown was being courted by Trump for help with Trump’s business dealings in California.
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According to Martin, Brown said Trump had been told by casino mogul Steve Wynn, “If I was doing anything in California, I’d talk to Willie Brown because anybody else will take your money and do nothing.”
Taking the advice, Martin wrote, Trump had flown Brown and his entourage from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Brown was at a speaking engagement, to Teterboro, New Jersey, for a meeting.
And who was part of Brown’s entourage? None other than the now-vice president and presumptive Democratic nominee for president — except her role in the affair sounds more like arm candy and a diversion than a participant in any business decisions.
So, the future presidential rival to Trump was a free-riding passenger on Trump’s private plane, the consort of a man Trump needed to grease the wheels of Golden State politics.
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“I have the picture,” Brown told Martin. (He was “flashing a smile,” Martin wrote — which might mean the picture is more than just Harris waving and grinning in a luxurious environment, but who knows?)
Tellingly, Harris was not an actual part of the meeting between Trump and Brown in New Jersey, according to Martin. Why should she be? The place for girlfriends and groupies at a rock concert is backstage or in the stands. Politics is no different.
The scene is presented neutrally in Martin’s telling. (There’s no surprise there. Politico presents itself as an objective chronicler of D.C. machinations, and it occasionally lives up to that, but its liberal bias comes through on a regular basis.)
But what the story represents is a reminder of how Kamala Harris’ most important leg up in politics came as a result of a romantic relationship with a political powerbroker.
Brown and Harris broke up in 1995, according to USA Today, but he remained an influential part of her career, supporting her run for San Francisco district attorney in 2003 (Brown was San Francisco’s mayor at the time).
It’s also a reminder how opportunistic her current, chronically dishonest vilification of Trump actually is.
When he was simply a businessman with money to spread around to helpful politicians, she was apparently happy to be a guest on his private plane — if only as the consort of the man he really wanted to see.
She even accepted money directly from Trump for her own campaigns in 2011 and 2013, The Daily Beast reported last week. The Daily Beast, being liberal, tries to spin this against Trump, but Trump spent a lifetime in business greasing politicians — heck, Bill and Hillary Clinton were guests at his wedding to Melania Trump in 2005.
For Trump, taking a meeting with Brown in the 1990s to win help in California projects, or donating to Harris on the grounds she might be helpful a decade and a half later was part of the cost of doing business.
For Harris, it was only a couple of degrees from prostituting her political power — taking money on the implied promise of support in the future.
Considering how Harris got her political start (count how often the ex-lover Willie Brown is euphemistically referred to as her “mentor” over the next few months), that’s actually kind of fitting.
But there’s no doubt that a picture of a youthful Harris glorying in the luxury of a Trump private plane — flying as part-guest, part-geisha to a man 30 years her senior — presents a very real potential for humiliation for the presidential wannabe.
The seamier side of Harris’ rise could cause problems for her in the public eye.
