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The long history of ugly right-wing media attacks against VP Kamala Harris

Right-wing media have claimed she is a “DEI hire” and launched sexist attacks

Written by Jack Winstanley & Payton Armstrong

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Right-wing media figures have spent years attacking Vice President Kamala Harris with unfounded claims that she is a “DEI hire,” assertions that she is uneducated or sounds intoxicated, and other racist and sexist attacks.

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  • As 2024 campaign coverage zeros in on a hypothetical Harris run, right-wing media are continuing their drumbeat of attacks against the VP

    • Since being named President Joe Biden’s running mate during the 2020 presidential election, Harris has frequently been the subject of sexist and racist attacks. Many of these attacks aimed to discredit the legitimacy of Harris’ role, with some right-wing media figures claiming Biden was a puppet for a nascent Harris presidential run. [Vanity Fair, 8/13/20; The New York Times, 10/9/20; The Washington Post, 10/7/20]
    • Claims that Harris might become the nominee — either as a result of Biden dropping out of the race or dying in office — have percolated around the ongoing discussion of Biden's age. Speculation about a Harris presidency has reached a fever pitch amid the fallout from Biden’s debate performance on June 27 and ongoing concerns about the president’s age. [The Wall Street Journal, 11/24/23, 11/17/23, 5/1/23; The Associated Press, 7/5/24]

  • Right-wing media have claimed that Harris was a “DEI hire” for vice president or that her selection was “based solely on diversity criteria”

    • Appearing on Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime, conservative comedian Adam Carolla stated that the “affirmative action hiring of Kamala Harris was a horrible idea.” He doubled down on the claim that Harris is unqualified by adding that “you need the most qualified person, who could be Black or Indian or half of each or a woman, or not identify as either — but you need competence.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 7/8/24]
    • Newsmax host Rob Schmitt claimed that Harris’ career was “revived magically by diversity, equity, and inclusion,” after her 2020 presidential primary debate against then-fellow Democratic candidate Tulsi Gabbard. Earlier Schmitt had noted that, despite supposedly “terrible” polling numbers (which he did not provide), Harris has “the advantage of being a Black woman in the Democratic Party.” [Newsmax, Rob Schmitt Tonight, 7/8/24]
    • The New York Post published an op-ed claiming that a hypothetical President Kamala Harris would be “the country’s first DEI president.” The piece, written by Fox Business Network correspondent Charlie Gasparino, claimed that Harris “checked all the boxes” by having a Jamaican father and Indian mother and that Harris had “jump[ed] at the chance to serve as [Biden’s] VP when DEI came calling.” [New York Post, 7/6/24] 
    • The Five co-host Jeanine Pirro: Harris “has proven to America why DEI doesn’t work.” Co-host Greg Gutfeld added: “She’s being overlooked because she didn’t earn it. She was the least popular candidate in the primaries of 2020 — and there were a lot of people involved. So there's a sense that, as what happens with DEI, unfortunately, even if you are qualified, people are skeptical of how you got there.” [Fox News, The Five, 7/2/24]
    • Fox host Brian Kilmeade: “The Democrats made their bed when they picked Kamala Harris. Have to have a woman, has to be a woman of color.” Guest Horace Cooper replied, “If the test for president is, can you cackle? Is the test, can you laugh in the middle of your statement? Can you not be ever serious? She passes with flying colors. Her own party knows that she's incompetent.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 7/2/24]
    • In reference to the possibility of Harris replacing Biden on the presidential ticket, Gutfeld argued that “it's very easy to make, say, a DEI hire, but it’s almost impossible to do a DEI fire.” [Fox News, Gutfeld!, 7/2/24]
    • Fox host Jesse Watters claimed Harris is being used “like a DEI prop.” Watters said: “Why does the White House treat Kamala like a DEI prop and dangle her in front of audiences to win over wine moms and African-Americans with windows into her silly personal life? Why would getting to know Kamala better make people more likely to vote for Biden? The American people already know Kamala and they don't like her.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 5/14/24]
    • On The Five, Watters said Harris “gets more favorable treatment because of her race and gender.” [Fox News, The Five, 8/7/23]
    • On his show, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk declared that “equity is taking away people's stuff based on some sort of socio-economic group,” and that “Kamala Harris has now become the jive-speaking spokesperson of equity.” [Real America’s Voice, The Charlie Kirk Show, 10/5/22]
    • Fox host Laura Ingraham said that Harris “knows nothing except how to play the race card to get ahead,” adding, “Selecting a VP based solely on diversity criteria and not objective merit is not only stupid, it's really dangerous.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 11/18/21]
    • Fox host Rachel Campos-Duffy called Harris “the affirmative action vice president” after Harris visited a historically Black college. Duffy: “Yeah, she was not dealing with the root cause. She was at a football game, because you know, as the affirmative action vice president who was selected because she was a woman and because she was the right color, she likes to go to these things. She went to her alma mater, Howard University, a historically Black college. This is the kind of stuff she likes to do. Stuff on the border, not so much.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends Weekend, 9/19/21]
    • On Fox & Friends, a guest argued that Harris was put in charge of the border “simply because she has brown skin.” Guest Autry Pruitt: “Vice President Harris' appointment was simply because she has brown skin. President Biden is trying to inoculate himself against attacks. After all of the images have come out, after all the mistreatment of kids at this border, after the surge, he needs someone brown so he can ward off criticism. It's simply that fact.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/7/21]

  • Right-wing media have launched racist attacks and claimed that Harris “is not even Black”

    • In a 2020 article for Newsweek, John Eastman, who would reportedly go on to play a pivotal role in then-President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, resurrected the racist “birther” conspiracy theory to speculate that the Oakland, California-born Harris was not a “natural born citizen” and thus ineligible for office. Newsweek later issued a lengthy editors note for the article, apologizing and acknowledging that it was being “used by some as a tool to perpetuate racism and xenophobia.” [Media Matters, 8/13/20; Newsweek, 8/12/20; CNN, 3/6/24]
    • Pro-Trump social media figures Diamond and Silk claimed that Harris “is not even Black” while discussing her family heritage. Ineitha Hardaway, known online as “Diamond,” also seemed not to know that India is part of Asia, adding, “Somebody claimed that she was Asian American and then they are saying she's Indian. I don't know what she is.” [WMAL, Mornings on the Mall, 8/12/20]
    • On BlazeTV, Fox host Mark Levin discussed Harris’ ethnicity, commenting that she “is not an African American.” [BlazeTV, LevinTV, 8/11/20]
    • On Fox News, Dinesh D’Souza, who has pushed election conspiracy theories, said Harris shouldn't be considered “African-American” because she “is from the legacy of” a prominent Jamaican slave owner. D’Souza erroneously claimed that the Democratic Party is trying to “eradicate all connections to the slave plantation” where Harris’ family purportedly descends from. [Media Matters, 8/11/20, 5/4/22; The Washington Post, 1/17/21; Reuters, 8/25/20]

  • Right-wing media figures have fixated on Harris’ past relationships and claimed she “launched her political career in [the] bedroom”

    • Former Fox News primetime host Tucker Carlson repeatedly made misogynistic comments about Harris’ relationships, including with Willie Brown and Montel Williams. In 2021, Carlson declared that Harris “is the ex-girlfriend of Montel Williams and will be described that way forever after on this show,” and the following year, Carlson invoked Harris’ relationship with Williams to distract from his own about-face on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. [Mediaite, 11/15/21; Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 1/5/21; Media Matters, 3/4/22]
    • Appearing on Tucker Carlson Tonight, right-wing pundit Jesse Kelly called Harris “Willie Brown's bratwurst bun.” Kelly added that Harris would “do anything to get ahead.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 7/15/21]
    • In 2019 when Harris was running for president, right-wing media spread a sexist smear against Harris that she had “sle[pt] [her] way to the top with Willie Brown.” Conservative actor James Woods was a major promoter of a hashtag on then-Twitter that attacked Harris as “#HorizontalHarris.” [Media Matters, 1/31/19; Reuters, 10/13/20; Twitter/X, 7/31/19]
    • The Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft accused Harris of launching “her political career in [the] bedroom,” with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. [The Gateway Pundit, 1/27/19]
    • Owen Shroyer, a host for Alex Jones' Infowars, went on a rant filled with sexist accusations sexualizing Harris, saying she “basically sucked and ducked her way to the top.” [Media Matters, 1/31/19]
    • Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh spread the Willie Brown smear. Limbaugh elevated the smear to his nationally syndicated show in 2020 when, in response to a comment by Brown that “Harris is a tested and proven campaigner who will work her backside off to get Biden elected,” Limbaugh went on a sexist rant, declaring: “If anybody knows her backside, it’s Willie Brown.” [Media Matters, 8/10/20]

  • Right-wing media have lobbed sexist attacks against Harris, with many fixating on her voice or laugh

    • Fox host Brian Kilmeade attacked Harris for cursing: “Now she has gone over the top” and is “starting to act like one of the guys.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 5/14/24]
    • Right-wing streamer Steven Crowder called Harris a “generically ethnic whore.” [YouTube, Louder with Crowder, 10/27/22]
    • Right-wing pundit Benny Johnson condemned Harris for not having children: “It is the most important job you will ever have. Kamala Harris never had the selflessness.” [Youtube, The Benny Show, 7/26/22]
    • Fox's Jeanine Pirro called Harris a “bimbo” over her trip to Poland. Pirro complained that Biden had sent Harris “to Poland in the midst of this invasion of Ukraine by Russia, and she's asked what is the president going to do about refugees from Ukraine? This bimbo literally starts cackling and laughing. It is a sad commentary on the highest ranking woman in the United States.” [WABC, The Judge Jeanine Tunnel To Towers Foundation Show, 3/20/22]
    • Fox radio host Jimmy Failla said that Harris’ laugh could drive Russian President Vladimir Putin to suicide. On Fox News’ Outnumbered, Failla said: “If Putin spends 10 minutes around Kamala and her awkward laugh, the only person he's going to want to kill is himself.” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 2/18/22]
    • In a segment on Harris, Newsmax host Greg Kelly said that “she just wants to flaunt it and I think she wants to flirt.” Kelly continued, “She just kind of likes to walk around like she's some sort of beauty queen.” [Newsmax, Greg Kelly Reports, 10/20/20]
    • On Fox, guest Harmeet Dhillon said that Harris has a “bossy-ing mannerism” and a “grating voice.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 10/13/20]
    • During and immediately after the first 2020 vice presidential debate, right-wing media figures called Harris “vile,” “bitchy,” “smug,” and a “clown.” The Blaze's Allie Beth Stuckey wrote also that Harris “look[s] like she’s an angry teenager” and right-wing influencer Ian Miles Cheong said that Harris came off like an “absolute b*tch." [Media Matters, 10/7/20]
    • Right-wing media reacted to Harris’ announcement as Biden’s running mate in 2020 by using sexist rhetoric to try to denounce her as a candidate. Right-wing pundits claimed that she was “abrasive,” too “ambitious,” and that her “hard-edged personal style, and facial sneer will make her like 10,000 fingernails on 1,000 loud chalkboards, amplified by a boom microphone so strong it could be heard for a hundred miles.” [Media Matters, 8/9/20]

  • Right-wing media have claimed Harris is uneducated and attacked her as “a PSA for your brain on drugs”

    • Fox anchor Julie Banderas claimed that her young daughters “speak more eloquently” than Harris and said, “I’m sorry, just being a minority doesn’t make you fit for president.” Outnumbered co-host and former Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany claimed that Harris’ speech “does not quite ring like commander-in-chief.” Outnumbered co-host Emily Compagno added, apparently addressing the press, “So the question of how did we get here? Well, it's because all of you. And the fact that now the understudy is Kamala Harris, who they point out was not qualified to be a vice president, that President Biden selected her simply because of her color and her gender, that's the mess that they created.” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 7/2/24]
    • On Fox News' Hannity, Newt Gingrich called Harris a “shallow, uneducated and uneducable person.” He added that, “other than her weird laugh, there's no really significant part to her.” [Fox News, Hannity, 6/12/24]
    • Greg Gutfeld stated on The Five that Harris sounds like “a woman at the bar on her fourth skinny margarita.” [Fox News, The Five, 3/16/23]
    • Fox contributor Raymond Arroyo stated that Harris “is a PSA for your brain on drugs.” Arroyo also called Harris “a living Wordle. You know those Wordle things where you just grasp at five words and try to make a solution?” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 10/11/22]
    • In an appearance on Jesse Watters Primetime, Gingrich stated that Harris “doesn't know anything, she doesn't know how to learn anything, she's inarticulate, and she's not sure what the big words mean anyway.” Gingrich also insinuated that Harris was only hired for her race and gender, stating, “She fits all the various, you know, personality requirements. She's a woman. She's a woman of color. She comes from our biggest state.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 6/21/22]
    • Fox News contributor and New York Post columnist Miranda Devine stated on Hannity that Harris “looks like an extra out of an old Cheech and Chong movie.” Devine added that when appearing in public, Harris looks like “some sort of a stoner waving her arms around and speaking in complete nonsense.” [Fox News, Hannity, 3/22/22]
    • Right-wing media accounts on social media, including The Federalist’s Mollie Hemmingway and The Daily Wire, circulated a deceptively-edited soundbite from an interview with Harris to accuse her of having “kindergarten-level insight.” Harris had been asked to explain the war in Ukraine in “layman’s terms”; Harris’ response was then selectively edited to include only her description of the relative sizes of the countries, which right-wing media called “child-like.” [Media Matters, 3/1/22]
    • Greg Kelly baselessly speculated that Harris “has a drug or alcohol problem” and claimed that she “needs help.” Conservative radio host Mark Simone added that he had supposedly “been hearing this for months that she is at happy hour quite a bit and happy hour starts about noon,” and that Harris “has an IQ maybe 85/90 to begin with.” [Newsmax, Greg Kelly Reports, 11/10/21]