Trump campaign leaves ticket for Tupac at VP debate after Kamala Harris named him ‘best rapper alive’
Getty Images
The Trump campaign is reportedly leaving a vice presidential debate ticket for Tupac Shakur as a jab at Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, who recently called the hip-hop icon, who was killed in 1996, the “best rapper alive.”
A Trump campaign adviser shared the news on a press call, according to multiple reports.
“I asked the Trump campaign who Vice President Mike Pence is bringing to tonight’s debate,” CBS News reporter Nicole Sganga tweeted Wednesday afternoon. “A spokesperson responded: ‘Tupac.’”
The Spectator magazine identified that spokesperson as Jason Miller, a senior campaign adviser.
Harris made the gaffe during the NAACP’s virtual convention last month, after CNN commentator Angela Rye asked, “Best rapper alive?”
The Democratic vice presidential candidate said Tupac – then corrected herself. "I keep doing that," Harris said.
“West Coast girls think Tupac lives on,” Rye joked.
That prompted laughs from Harris, who is a sitting U.S. senator from California – where she was once the top prosecutor of a law enforcement system that Tupac’s music, in songs like “Changes,” sometimes pushed back against.
“Um, who would I say? I mean, there’s so many. … There are some that I would not mention right now because they should stay in their lane,” Harris continued, before trailing off without answering the question.
Rye replied, “That was not supposed to be a stumper.”
Tupac was killed in an unsolved Las Vegas drive-by shooting in 1996 at the age of 25. Unfounded, long-running conspiracy theories have claimed that he's still alive and had faked his own death.
The vice presidential debate kicks off in Salt Lake City at 9 p.m. ET and will be the only time Harris meets Vice President Mike Pence face to face before Election Day.