Kamala Harris accused of plagiarism in 2008 book

Political Analyst, Dr. Meena Bose weighs in on this latest report as well as Harris' upcoming interview on Fox

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right on the Legacy Retiremer Group dot com phone line.

(00:02):
Political analyst joining me, Doctor Mina Bose, Doctor Bose, thank
you for the time this morning. Want to get your
thoughts on I want to talk about Kamala Harrison her
media blitz and she's going to be on Fox tonight. Well,
we'll get to that in a minute. That's getting a
lot of the attention right now. But what's not getting
a lot of the attention is that Vice President Harris

(00:23):
has been accused of plagiarizing her book that she co
authored in two thousand and nine when she was DA
of San Francisco. The book is called Smart on Crime,
A career Prosecutor's Plan to make us Safer. What do
we know about these these plagiarism allegations, doctor bos.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Well, from what we can see and a destroy growth
yesterday's I believe on the fifteenth there are some problems
in the book, this co authored book with quote passages
that were cited but.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
Not quotation marks were not used. I believe evently there
was a place where a passage did not have a citation,
and these are they need to be corrected. I think
it's my understanding it's a very small number of words
in a book. I'm not justifying it as an academic
Any student who had this issue would have to correct
it and would have to have a discussion. I will

(01:15):
say that for a co authored book that was clearly
published when the when the vice president was on the
campaign trail running for for Attorney general in California, I
can see how these things happen. And it's probably a
lesson from this is that if you put your name
on a publication, you have to be one hundred percent

(01:38):
sure that everything is correct. I am guessing almost certainly
that the publisher will correct it in the will correct it.
I think, frankly, if the candidate wants the vice president
and running for president, especially if the candidate went it's
Harris Wins, I don't know that this would have become
used at all. I'm not sure that this is a
particularly vote not my field, highly cited book, but obviously

(02:02):
any book, any book by a that has mistakes should
be corrected, particularly when it's in the public euze.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
Yeah, the so called plagiarism hunter. This guy does this
for a living. He's an Austrian professor, Stephen Whoeber. He
found twenty seven times in the book that Harris kind
of lifted some passages from some other publications, including Wikipedia,
which I've got to, you know, talk to my high
school junior about that. I mean, somebody you know who's

(02:30):
writing papers. I'm like, hey, buddy, you can't go online
and just copy and paste of this stuff. You'll get caught.
It's not there's certainly a breach of standards here. And
as you say, how big of a deal is this, Well,
I think it just speaks to the credibility of the
vice president and the fact that she is unable to
come up with original thoughts. And we see you've seen

(02:51):
that throughout the campaign, and now this just kind of
solidifies that theory that going back to two thousand and nine,
she was unable to come up with original thoughts.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
Well, I mean, I guess I would say this. I
wouldn't kind of throw the co author under the bus
here to speak. But I suspect that Harris had very
little to do with this book.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Right.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
It's a campaign book, and it's kind of expected these
days that when someone is running for office that they
publish a book. And again I'm not justifying it, but
I suspect that there was probably fairly little involvement by
at the time San Francisco, DA in the writing of
this book. And that's you know, maybe that's the lesson
Harris that you in addition to you always set your sources,

(03:33):
You use quotation marks, you use reliable sources. Wikipedia is
this interesting, you know, compilation of information When you look
at their footnotes, A lot of times they get information
from news releases and interesting sources. But you should do
your own research. This is not a scholarly book, right,
nor was it ever intended to be. So it's a
different expectation. It's careless. I don't see this being an

(03:54):
issue much beyond the next news cycle. And in fact,
as you were saying, the interview today, probably focus on
the issues that voters are the economy, immigration, et cetera.
I think that will be the news.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah, I think so too. And just to put a
bow on the plagiarism allegations. And if you are going
to have your name as an author or a co
author of a book, you should probably read it and
probably do your due diligence and make sure that everything
is on the up and up before you go to
the publisher.

Speaker 3 (04:20):
But you know, we'll have a campaign staff or do it.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
But yeah, have somebody do it exactly.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
Don't write the book or don't write the books on
the book.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
Speaking with a political analyst, doctor Mina bo So, let's
talk about Kamala's media appearances. She's gone on friendly media
the last week ten days or so, and that now
she will join Brett Baer tonight. Brett is a more
of a moderate host on Fox, which is probably why
they agreed to do that. The Hairs campaign agreed to
join him today. He says it'll be twenty five or

(04:52):
thirty minutes unedited in its entirety, and it kind of
talks speaks to the fact that the Hairs campaign could
be feeling a little hot under the collar as far
as feeling some pressure that they are going willing to
go on Fox News tonight in a taped interview.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
Well, I would say a couple of points with that.
I mean, we know that this race is close. You
can look at any of the polls, and for all
the people say don't pay attention to polls, we know
that the battleground states are closed. In fact, this interview
is going to be just outside of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania.
Write nineteen electoral College votes. Pennsylvania will be a play
a big part in deciding who wins the White House.

(05:33):
There is a root to victory for both Harris and
Trump without Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania makes it a law that's the
biggest of the seven battlegrounds. So I would say that
the vice president going on Fox brings up a couple
of points. One is showing in the final stretch the
lesson three weeks to election day that she is willing

(05:56):
to sit down and address answer tough questions. I think
paign will Also the campaign had called for a second
debate with former President Trump, and former President Trump didn't
want to do that, and so I think that will
be I think that will be another campaign strategy of
you know, vice president is going into uh, tough settings, right,

(06:18):
it's taking questions, is engaging and uh and that uh
why won't why won't Trump participate in a debate? And
so I think that there's a part of that. But
I think primarily it's too uh to show that this
is someone who is ready to be president and going

(06:39):
to audiences that may not be friendly, right. I think
it's fair to say that Fox by most for most
liberal viewers is not a source that they turned to,
just as MSNBC wouldn't be for conservatives. But I think
the fact that she's going on is important