The X account that once served as Kamala Harris's rapid-response war room during the 2024 presidential campaign resurfaced Tuesday with a post meant to mock President Donald Trump's hosting of Britain's King Charles III, and promptly demonstrated it cannot tell the difference between American soldiers and the army they defeated in 1783.
The account @HQNewsNow, formerly @KamalaHQ, posted an image of uniformed musicians on the White House South Lawn along with the message: "There are currently Redcoats on the White House lawn to welcome the King of England." The post drew immediate ridicule and was tagged with a Community Note correcting the record, as the Daily Caller reported.
The soldiers in the photo were not British. They were members of the United States Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps, an American military unit whose uniforms are patterned after those worn by musicians in General George Washington's Continental Army. The red coats they wear are, in fact, a symbol of American independence, not British imperialism.
The Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps explains on its official website that its musicians "recall the days of the American Revolution as they perform in uniforms patterned after those worn by the musicians of General George Washington's Continental Army." The site adds that "military musicians of the period wore the reverse colors of the regiments to which they were assigned," and that the uniforms "are dated circa 1784, and consist of black tricorn hats, white wigs, waistcoats, colonial coveralls, and distinct red regimental coats."
In other words, the red coats worn by the corps are the reverse of the Continental Army's blue, a convention of the era, not a nod to King George. The unit performs at most official ceremonies and nearly all arrival ceremonies for foreign heads of state. It has done so for decades, across administrations of both parties.
None of this is obscure military trivia. The corps has performed publicly at events ranging from state arrivals to the U.S. Army's 240th birthday celebration at George Washington's Mount Vernon in 2015. Anyone with passing familiarity with White House ceremony, or a willingness to spend thirty seconds on a search engine, could have avoided the mistake.
X's Community Note feature flagged the post with a correction: "These are U.S. Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps musicians wearing Revolutionary War-era uniforms patterned after Continental Army musicians, not British Redcoats." That alone would have been embarrassing enough. But the pile-on went further.
Charlotte Clymer, a transgender activist and former communications staffer with the Human Rights Campaign who identifies as an Old Guard veteran, posted her own rebuke on X:
"This is the Fife & Drum Corps from the U.S. Army's 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment. They perform at most official ceremonies and nearly all arrival ceremonies for foreign heads of state. I'm an Old Guard alum. This isn't weird."
When even progressive activists are correcting you on military history, the error is not a close call. It is a faceplant.
Republican Texas Rep. Pat Fallon was less diplomatic. He has watched Harris's political operation stumble before, and his response was pointed:
"Not surprised that Kamala's HQ has no idea what it's talking about either."
The @TodayinHistory account offered a gentler suggestion: "Do a little research. Read a book or two. It goes a long way..." GOP strategist Steve Guest, a former staffer for Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, was blunter, calling the team behind the account "historically illiterate." Another X user, posting under the handle @spudchungus, asked: "Do you not understand the official uniform of the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps you absolute imbeciles?"
The @KamalaHQ account was the Harris campaign's digital attack arm during the 2024 presidential race. After Harris lost, the account rebranded as @HQNewsNow under the name "Headquarters," but its instincts appear unchanged: shoot first, check facts never. The Redcoats post followed the same pattern that defined the campaign's online presence, grab an image, attach a snarky caption, and hope the dunk lands before anyone notices the history is wrong.
This time, the dunk missed by roughly 242 years. The account confused the army that won American independence with the army that tried to prevent it. That is not a minor slip. It is the kind of error that reveals a deeper problem: a political operation so consumed by the impulse to ridicule its opponents that it cannot be bothered to understand what it is looking at.
The episode is a small but telling window into the operational culture that surrounded Harris's 2024 bid. Questions about Harris's political judgment have dogged her since before she joined the 2020 ticket, and the people still running her legacy accounts do nothing to quiet those doubts.
President Trump hosted King Charles III on the White House South Lawn with the full ceremonial honors that the United States extends to visiting heads of state. The Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps performed as it has for foreign leaders under presidents of both parties. There was nothing unusual about the ceremony, nothing novel about the uniforms, and nothing remotely British about the soldiers wearing them.
The only unusual element was a political account with ties to a former presidential candidate mistaking American soldiers for enemy troops, and broadcasting that confusion to millions of followers.
Harris herself has been positioning for a potential return to national politics. She signaled interest in a 2028 presidential bid earlier this year, even as prominent Democrats have begun to question whether her political moment has passed. California Governor Gavin Newsom has publicly suggested as much, and the jockeying inside the Democratic Party for 2028 has already begun in earnest.
Against that backdrop, the continued operation of the @HQNewsNow account raises an obvious question: who benefits from this? The account's post did not embarrass Trump. It did not embarrass King Charles. It embarrassed the people behind the account and, by extension, the political figure whose name it still carries in the public mind.
If Harris wants to be taken seriously as a future candidate, the operatives still trading on her brand might consider learning the difference between George Washington's army and the one he beat.
The Fife and Drum Corps has been performing in those red coats since before the Constitution was ratified. The fact that a major political operation could not identify an American military uniform on the White House lawn tells you everything about the seriousness of the people who want to run the country again.
