Kamala Harris thinks the Constitution is a joke.

At least, that’s what you’d think from some of her answers at Thursday night’s Democratic presidential debate. At the ABC event in Houston, moderators pressed the California Democrat on her promises to ban assault weapons via executive action, not legislation, and whether that would be really constitutional. Fellow candidate Joe Biden jumped in to challenge Harris on the constitutionality of her plans.

She laughed.

Yes, literally: Harris’s first response was to laugh away the question, and said “Hey Joe, yes we can,” making a joke using a play on words with an old slogan from the Obama campaign.

On Biden criticizing her leaning on executive orders in her plans, @JoeBiden interrupts her after the question is asked. @KamalaHarris says, "Hey Joe, yes we can." — Kyung Lah (@KyungLahCNN) September 13, 2019

It gets worse.

Harris could have attempted to point to a part of the Constitution that she thinks grants the president the authority to make millions of law-abiding gun owners into criminals with the stroke of a pen. Instead, she invoked “dead bodies,” “autopsies,” and “police funerals” to fearmonger and scare people about gun violence until they stop talking about the dubious legality of her plans.

“Our babies are going to schools to have lockdown drills. It is traumatizing our children,” @KamalaHarris #DemDebate — Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) September 13, 2019

It’s a classic authoritarian tactic. Use emotion and fear to dismiss legal concerns and challenges to the extent of your power. This cannot be overlooked: Harris has made it clear that when she thinks the cause is important enough, she is willing to go beyond the bounds of our constitutional order and abuse her power.

And that’s exactly what an assault weapons ban would be, especially if enacted via executive order. Even Biden admits this, saying : “You have no constitutional authority to issue that executive order.”

When asked how her gun control plans are constitutional, Kamala Harris starts talking about “autopsies” and “police funerals.”



Authoritarians fear monger and use emotion to dismiss legal constraints on their power.



She is a wanna-be tyrant. #DemDebate — Brad Polumbo (@brad_polumbo) September 13, 2019

At the end of the day, the fact that Harris is an authoritarian isn’t exactly news. We already knew this because of her harsh record as a prosecutor in California.

ABC moderators deserve some credit for calling her out on her authoritarian tendencies on the debate stage. Let’s just hope Harris’s supporters realize what they’d be getting us into.