Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) warned Republicans not to underestimate Vice President Kamala Harris’s ability to win her presidential battle against former President Donald Trump.
The senator said he believes Harris “could win,” adding that “Republicans would make a huge mistake by discounting her” during an interview with political commentator Tucker Carlson on Tuesday.
Lee said Harris could be the victor in November partly because he believes the press is on her side. He criticized media outlets for walking back Harris’s label as “border czar,” a title she was commonly referred to after the White House tapped her to address immigration reform at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“They’re scrubbing things she has said in the past,” Lee said during a two-hour segment of the Tucker Carlson Show. “Crazy statements she has made, from defunding the police to aggressive, radical climate change policies, Green New Deal Stuff.”
Lee is worried the press is “papering over” Harris’s record. He said Trump could lose to the vice president “because she’s got this media industrial complex that’s completely behind her.”
“I think we should be very worried about it,” Lee alerted Trump supporters.
While a recent Wall Street Journal poll shows Trump leading Harris by 2%, the GOP nominee’s performance is lagging from a 6-point lead he held against President Joe Biden before the Democrat dropped his reelection bid.
When Trump announced his presidential ambitions back in 2016, Lee met the news with skepticism as he worried the former Democrat wouldn’t govern according to conservative values. After the rocky start, Lee developed a robust relationship with Trump, standing by him during impeachment proceedings in 2019 and decrying the former president’s recent New York hush money conviction as “a sad day for America.”
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Lee, who has been in the Senate since 2010, explained the relational shift during a recent interview with the Dispatch.
“While he and I don’t agree, there are a number of areas in which we take different policy positions, he aligned a lot more with Republican ideals than I expected,” Lee said. “In some areas, I was particularly surprised how well things went.”