RICHMOND, Virginia — The Washington Examiner wasn’t sure what to expect at the Altria Theater, where former Vice President Kamala Harris was speaking on Monday night. A snowstorm a week ago debilitated much of Richmond, and the roads were still icy.
Would anyone brave the bad weather and show up to hear what the defeated Democratic presidential nominee had to say on a speaking tour where she charged up to $350 for a ticket and even more for a signed copy of her book, 107 Days?
Turns out, they would. She pulled in almost a full house.
The Richmond leg was a stop on the second part of Harris’s book tour, after her team added 18 more dates following a successful first 17. Other areas included the critical primary state of South Carolina, as well as cities with large black voter populations, such as Detroit; Jackson, Mississippi; Memphis, Tennessee; and Montgomery, Alabama.
Her strategic stops made sense. Harris is considering jumping into the 2028 White House race. A new Harvard-Harris poll released this week shows her leading the Democratic contenders, while Vice President JD Vance has a commanding lead among Republicans. Harris, who lost the 2024 election to President Donald Trump under unique circumstances, won Virginia with 52% of the vote. In Richmond, 82% of voters cast their ballot for her.
Inside the Altria Theater, there was another political celebrity audience members were buzzing about, but the line to take pictures with her, unlike Harris, was free.
Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), the state’s first female governor, attended the event with her husband and three daughters. She was seated in the third row of the box seats and posed for pictures with fans so close that her security looked nervous at times.
Twenty-two minutes after it was scheduled to start, the main event, a sort of “I told you this would happen” rant, began.
Harris, dressed in a black pant suit, came out to a standing ovation. The moderator was Emily Calandrelli, known as “The Space Gal” on Netflix and the 100th woman to fly in space. Almost immediately, two pro-Palestinian protesters started shouting from their seats and were quickly escorted out. The former vice president, unfazed, kept talking.
During the hourlong conversation, Harris fielded questions from Calandrelli on what civic engagement could accomplish, America’s standing in the world, new alliances, science, and took verbal jabs at Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Harris also discussed the unrest in Minneapolis, charging that the Trump administration was trying to persuade people to doubt what they were seeing with their own eyes. She also strongly questioned the tactics being used by federal officers after two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were shot to death in January.
“In reality, we all saw what happened,” Harris said. “A federal law enforcement agency that has been sicced on communities like a paramilitary force to wreak violence in American cities.”
Harris said immigration reform is needed in the United States but criticized the administration’s approach.
“When we see the brutality of it, when we see the abuse of power, to be told, ‘Turn your eyes away. You didn’t see what you think you saw,’” she said. “To be told by people who are in a position of authority and power, before there’s even been an investigation, what conclusion they have drawn within seemingly minutes, and therefore that’s the conclusion the American people should draw. That’s not how democracy works.”
In the immediate aftermath of the Pretti shooting, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem described him as a “domestic terrorist,” while White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller called him an “assassin” who “tried to murder federal agents.”
Harris reserved her sharpest attacks for Trump, telling the audience she predicted everything he and his administration would do and that people should have listened to her. She also took aim at corporate leaders, universities, and members of Congress — accusing them of “capitulation,” having a “feckless nature,” and bowing to a “tyrant.”
“How are they going to stand up for what is right in our democracy and then just bend at the knee at the foot of the tyrant?” she said to applause. She added that people in Congress know there is an “abuse of power” but are too afraid to speak out publicly.
“If they speak out, then [Trump] will say something. … These elected people who know what is wrong but don’t want to say anything in public for fear they will be called out, and then they’re worried about the security of themselves and their family,” she said. “That’s what’s happening in our country right now.”
Harris said the only remaining guardrails, for now, are judges.
“We do thankfully have a number of judges who are in position and who have rightly been standing up and showing in case after case what [Trump] is doing is unconstitutional and a violation of the law,” she said.
Harris’s talk turned to the midterm elections, and she encouraged everyone to vote, framing it as one of the most important elections to save democracy.
“We have the midterms coming up and an opportunity to put the guardrails in place around checks and balances based on those three coequal branches of government and put [Trump] in a place where he needs to be checked based on his abuses,” she said. “We have power.”
Following her hourlong conversation, in which she did not address future plans nor her possible Democratic rivals, the Washington Examiner was eager to find out what the audience thought.
An 82-year-old woman who lives in the Church Hill area of Richmond, named Martha, said it was the first time she’d felt “hopeful” in a while and pledged to volunteer with local campaigns.
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Her 79-year-old neighbor and companion, Melvin Harrison, did not have the same experience.
“I came because the ticket was free,” Harrison said. “I could have stayed at home and watched Memphis play and had a better time. Now I’ve got to get home in all this weather.”
