ROME — Vice President Kamala Harris’s snub of the Alfred E. Smith Catholic charity dinner was the umpteenth show of her “disdain for Catholics,” former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Callista Gingrich writes.
Kamala “declined the invitation to attend the Al Smith Dinner, the first presidential candidate to do so since Walter Mondale in 1984,” Gingrich notes. “Instead, she sent in a pre-recorded video message.”
She found time “for an appearance on the vulgar ‘Call Her Daddy’ podcast but not for a fundraiser benefitting impoverished children,” Gingrich observes, a clear sign of her own priorities.
Anti-Catholic choices are nothing new for Kamala, and with each passing day, “more Americans are reminded of Harris’s abysmal record targeting Catholics as California’s Attorney General and U.S. Senator, and as Vice President of the United States.”
Harris filed an amicus brief calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to force family-owned Hobby Lobby to violate its Christian beliefs and cover the cost of contraception for its employees, Gingrich recalls.
As senator, Harris grilled Catholic judicial nominees about their faith, she continues, implying that affiliation with the Knight of Columbus – a Catholic charitable organization that included JFK among its members – was “grounds for disqualification.”
It is no surprise that Catholic voters in swing states favor Trump over Harris by a full five points, Gingrich observes.
Just weeks away from the 2024 election, Catholics voters in two key Midwestern swing states — Michigan and Wisconsin — now favor Trump by double digits, as reported by the left-wing Catholic newspaper, The National Catholic Reporter.
Among Catholics in Wisconsin, Trump leads Harris by a full 18 percentage points, with 57 percent of prospective votes compared to Harris’s 39 percent.
Perhaps more significantly, in neighboring Michigan, Trump’s lead among voting Catholics stands at 12 points, with 53 percent of support to Harris’s 41 percent.
These data are not just a curiosity since as a demographic group, American Catholics have proven to be a reliable bellwether of presidential election results. As noted by one recent study, winning the Catholic vote, even by just a few percentage points, “is a reasonable indicator of who will win the American Presidency.”
This trend was evident in the past two elections. In 2016, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump received 52 percent of the Catholic vote versus Hillary Clinton’s 42 percent, and he won the election. In 2020, President Joe Biden managed to receive 51 percent of the Catholic vote to Trump’s 47 percent and similarly took the day.
While Harris campaigned in Wisconsin this week, President Trump was the featured guest speaker at the 79th Annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York City.
“I would not miss the Al Smith Dinner for anything in the world. I still remember coming here as a very young guy with my father,” Trump told the crowd.
“It’s an honor to be here to support the city and the community. It’s a great community that I love. I’ve been here a long time, and I love it.”
Meanwhile, Gingrich writes, Harris’s absence at the dinner “confirms what Catholic voters already know – Kamala Harris is the anti-Catholic candidate.”
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Thomas D. Williams is Breitbart Rome Bureau Chief and the author of The Coming Christian Persecution.