Kamala Harris flew to Germany on Thursday to attend the Munich Security Conference. When this trip was announced earlier this month, I asked, “What could possibly go wrong?” I had no idea that a controversy would begin before Air Force Two even left the tarmac.

An odd tweet was posted on Wednesday on the account for the U.S. virtual Embassy for Iran. The tweet was in Farsi. When I saw it, a buzz was developing because of the quote. The tweet shows a picture of Kamala and the quote in Farsi – “The truth is: racism exists in America. Xenophobia exists in America. Antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, it all exists. Tackling injustice wherever it exists remains the work ahead.”

.@VP: حقیقت این است: تبعیض نژادی در آمریکا وجود دارد. بیگانه ستیزی در آمریکا وجود دارد. یهود ستیزی، اسلام هراسی، همجنسگرا هراسی، ترنس هراسی، همه وجود دارند. رسیدگی به بی عدالتی هرکجا که باشد، فعالیت پیش روست. pic.twitter.com/mF14nwl9CZ

— USAbehFarsi (@USABehFarsi) February 16, 2022

That’s a pretty bad quote to relay to an Iranian audience on social media, right? The first question I had was when did we start up a virtual embassy for Iran? It sounded like some kind of hoax or a deliberate message of propaganda conflating social justice issues in the United States with the suffocating and brutal lack of human rights in Iran. The question became, “What in the hell is Kamala Harris doing?”, as Charles Cooke wrote at National Review. In Biden’s America, that was a perfectly legit question to ask.

The tweet was posted to the account of the virtual embassy, not on Kamala’s own Twitter account. As it turns out, the quote came from remarks she delivered last May at a ceremony where President Biden signed the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act. The State Department published an English-language version on MLK Day, January 17.

.@VP on injustice: "Here's the truth: Racism exists in America. Xenophobia exists in America. Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, it all exists. The work to address injustice wherever it exists remains the work ahead." pic.twitter.com/QTCAQ6hERy

— Department of State (@StateDept) January 17, 2022

Ok. We can understand all that in context to hate crimes and civil rights. It was for domestic consumption. It’s Kamala being Kamala – everything is about injustice and racism and Islamophobia and homophobia and so on. What remains unanswered, though, is why the State Department thought it was something that should be posted on the virtual embassy’s account. And, the timing of it was particularly ill-advised. It went up the day before Kamala flew to Munich. She was essentially addressing an international audience and stating that America is bad.

There used to be an unspoken rule that politicians didn’t speak ill of America or other Americans (politicians) overseas. Criticism was left at the water’s edge. That began to change after the George W. Bush administration when Barack Obama became president. He went on an apology tour to countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Germany, and France. It was disgraceful. During the Trump administration, the likes of John Kerry and Joe Biden traveled to Europe for conferences and let their audiences know that soon Trump would be gone and America would be back. Like a doddering old fool, Biden repeated that message as president on his first European trip. It is not unusual for Democrats to be criticized for a less than enthusiastic love of country because of this behavior. Was Kamala’s tweet just more of that?

I’m saying no here. The posting of her quote doesn’t seem to be of Kamala’s doing. It wasn’t on her Twitter account. I’d really like to have an explanation from the State Department, though. Someone there, whoever runs the social media account, has some ‘splainin’ to do. What the hell were they thinking? Times are tense enough with Russia poised to invade Ukraine. It’s bad enough that Kamala is being sent to the Munich Security Conference as a way to beef up her resume and her cred on the international stage. Shouldn’t Joe Biden be going? It was reported Thursday that Ukrainian President Zelensky is going to Munich. Kamala and Zelensky will speak there. We’ll have to hold our breath until that conversation if over. Who knows what inane thing Kamala will say or how many times she will cackle to the press? Team Biden is a nightmare.

Without context or explanation, Republicans pounced, as the expression goes.

For Vice President Harris to suggest moral equivalence between the Iranian regime’s desire to eliminate Israel and a national policy of gender apartheid with American equality under the law is truly dangerous and ungrounded in reality. Americans are better than this. https://t.co/fn1Cd7mzek

— Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) February 16, 2022

Ellie Cohanim, former deputy antisemitism czar under the Trump administration, weighed in.

This is *appalling* coming from a USG account. Why is the US @VP messaging as do America’s worst enemies? This is demeaning to Iranians who are being executed for being gay, oppressed for being Jewish…and an insult to all Americans! @USABehFarsi https://t.co/HwcBGOeaJg

— Ellie Cohanim (@elliecohanim) February 16, 2022

You get the picture. Those tweets are normal reactions. There are no human rights in Iran, certainly not as in America. There is no comparison to be made. There is also the matter of the current talks between the Biden administration and Iran to re-enter the horrible Obama-Biden era Iran nuclear agreement.

“Posting this from the @StateDept’s Farsi channel knowing full well it will arm the Iranian regime, the world’s top sponsor of terrorism and sworn enemy of the United States, with propaganda talking points is shocking—especially as the @USEnvoyIran is busy surrendering in Vienna,” wrote Len Khodorkovsky, former deputy assistant secretary of state.

The tweet wasn’t helpful to pro-democracy groups working in Iran.

“The regime in #Iran kills members of the #LGBTQ community, calls for another Holocaust & kills Muslims around the region,” wrote the National Union for Democracy in Iran (NUFDI), a movement for human rights and democracy in Iran.

“But @StateDept is tweeting in Persian about ‘discrimination, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, anti-gay injustice’ …in America,” the group added. “This is shameful & insulting.”

“We have democracy, freedom of speech, rule of law and equality under it. We have the ability to move towards a more perfect union,” wrote former Republican Rep. Scott Taylor. “None of this is true in Iran.”

“This is a disgraceful tweet by our Vice President,” he added.

Anyone think Kamala might be asked about the tweet by the traveling press? Will anyone be held accountable at the State Department? The question remains – what were they thinking?