Kamala Harris and Tim Walz

Media Matters / Molly Butler 

Research/Study Research/Study

Right-wing media are launching the weirdest attacks on Harris and Walz

“Joy,” laughs, and hugs from the candidates have all been subjects of right-wing ire

Written by Chloe Simon

Published

Since vice president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to be her running mate, right-wing media have erupted with a series of nonsense attacks against them, criticizing them for making “joy” a part of their campaign and laughing. Conservative media figures have also launched homophobic comments against Walz, have attacked him for the way he hugged his wife on stage, and have complained that Harris repeats lines in her stump speech. 

Jump to section...

  • Conservative attacks on Harris and Walz have been desperate and bizarre

    • Right-wing media have often featured racist and misogynistic attacks against Kamala Harris, who is now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Right-wing media figures have said she was a “DEI hire,” claimed she “is not even Black,” fixated on her past relationships to claim she “launched her political career in [the] bedroom,” and said she is an “uneducated and uneducable person.” [Media Matters, 7/11/24] 
    • Since Tim Walz was announced as Harris’s running mate, right-wing media have struggled to coherently criticize Walz, often launching weak, boilerplate attacks against him. Right-wing figures have called Walz “Tampon Tim,” a “male Karen with a pot belly,” and “the white guy with a white wife and white kids who hates white people.” [Media Matters, 8/6/24, 8/6/24, 8/6/24, 8/7/24]

  • Right-wing media have complained that the campaign talking point about “joy” and happiness is a tactic to distract from alleged policy failures

    • Fox News host Julie Banderas said she had to “call out” Harris on using the word joy because “the American people are not joyful about their checkbooks.” She continued, “They are not joyful about inflation. They're certainly not joyful about the economy.” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 8/9/24]
    • Daily Wire host Ben Shapiro wrote, “Thanks to Kamala Harris, joy (and everything else) is now 20% more expensive than when she took office.” [Twitter/X, 8/8/24]
    • Fox News contributor Steve Hilton claimed, “Nothing shows the utter degradation of the propaganda media more than their fawning claim that Kamala Harris will bring ‘joy.’” Hilton continued: “Putting yet another unprincipled machine politician who always panders to the left back in the White House will not bring ‘joy.’” [Twitter/X, 8/11/24]
    • Right-wing influencer James Lindsay argued that the joy Harris “is pushing has been explained by ‘organizers’ (Communist cadres) to be a Communist concept called ‘radical joy.” Lindsay continued that this “radical joy” is a “state of cult-religious ecstatic mania centered upon the idea of seizing power and using it to ‘advance history’ and punish class enemies.” [Twitter/X, 8/12/24]
    • Fox News host Mark Levin attacked Harris for being a “horribly nasty and foul-mouthed boss who ridicules and yells at her subordinates, but she’s a ‘joy.’” Levin added, “Repeat the media/campaign talking point: joy, joy, joy.” [Twitter/X, 8/11/24]
    • Students for Trump founder Ryan Fournier complained that Harris and Walz would “rather discuss joy and happiness, because that’s apparently their strategy to fix the country.” [Twitter/X, 8/13/24]
    • Right-wing outlet Twitchy wrote a piece titled “New Memo Went Out: Harris and Walz Campaigning on Message of JOY.” The piece claimed, “Thank goodness Harris is bringing joy back to the White House after sucking it all out during her term as vice president. The joy of inflation. The joy of grocery prices. The joy of 10 million illegals crossing the border.” [Twitchy, 8/10/24]

  • Some media personalities on the right have mocked Harris and Walz for laughing

    • Fox News host Greg Gutfeld accused Harris of “laughing all of the time” because “none of these positions she takes are actually meaningful.” Gutfeld also claimed that Harris is an “amorphous creature that conforms to whatever environment that best suits her” and “has no beliefs.” [Fox News, The Five, 8/5/24] 
    • Right-wing figure Terrence K. Williams posted a video of Harris and Walz laughing together, theorizing that “Kamala Harris and Tim Walz appeared to be High or Tipsy on stage.” Williams also fearmongered about the potential of “4 years of a laughing hyena and a Reject Off Brand Biden running the country.” [Twitter/X, 8/6/24]
    • Sharing a photo of the pair smiling on stage, conservative podcaster Bill Mitchell demanded, “Why are Harris and Walz always laughing?” A few days after that post, Mitchell further inquired, “Have you ever know a sane person to laugh for no apparent reason as much as Kamala Harris?” [Twitter/X, 8/9/24, 8/13/24]
    • Media Research Center published an article titled “Cacklin' Kamala: VP Bizarrely Laughs Uncontrollably While Saying 'Everybody Needs to be Woke.'” The piece guessed that it may be “insecurity” or “inebriation” that is causing her to laugh “while speaking when no one else is and without a joke ever being told.” [Media Research Center, 8/6/24]
    • Commentary magazine’s John Podhoretz posted, “Kamala, one tip. Don’t laugh at your own jokes.” [Twitter/X, 8/6/24]

  • Footage of Walz greeting and hugging his wife has been another point of criticism for right-wing media, claiming that his interactions with her are “very weird”

    • Sharing a video of Walz hugging his wife, Rumble host Donald Trump Jr. sarcastically wrote that it is “totally normal to greet your wife with a firm handshake and a bro hug/back slap.” He continued, “Tim Walz isn't weird at all, guys,” adding three laughing cry emojis. [Twitter/X, 8/11/24]
    • Article III Project senior counsel Will Chamberlain claimed that he “wouldn’t trust Walz around children” in part because Walz “shook his wife’s hand” after “his very first speech as VP nominee.” [Twitter/X, 8/7/24]
    • Fox’s Greg Gutfeld attacked Walz for his “very weird way of greeting his wife of 30 years,” saying, “He pulls her close and then goes in for that non-friction hug.” Guest Tyrus Murdoch also said that Walz “put his wife in the friendzone.” [Fox News, Gutfeld!, 8/8/24]
    • Fox News host Jesse Watters criticized Walz, saying that “the hug is not the way you hug your wife. You hug your wife from the body. You don't hug like this.” Watters also complained about Walz “waving profusely in a very unsettling manner, very unsettling. Men should not move this way.” Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 8/7/24]
    • Right-wing podcaster Sydney Watson asked, “Why did Tim Walz shake his own wife's hand and hug her like she's a buddy he saw at a backyard get together.” [Twitter/X, 8/9/24; Media Matters, 10/1/21]
    • Former Fox News producer Kyle Becker posted: “Tim Walz just shook his wife's hand on stage. Then she awkwardly instructed him to hug her.” Becker added that it is “definitely NOT weird.” [Twitter/X, 8/6/24]

  • Right-wing and fringe figures have been launching homophobic attacks on Walz, in part because of his LGBTQ allyship

    • Daily Wire host Matt Walsh labeled Walz’s role in a high school gay-straight alliance club as being “very bizarre behavior at a minimum. Something to look into. This guy is not right.” As a high school teacher, according to NBC News, Walz “devoted time and energy to help his students create the school’s first Gay-Straight Alliance in 1999, and several students who were part of it remember ‘Mr. Walz’ as goofy and accepting of everyone.” [Twitter/X, 8/9/24; NBC News, 8/9/24]
    • Longtime Trump ally Roger Stone called Walz a homophobic slur and “really, really weird” for “jumping around” at a campaign rally during an episode of his podcast. [Rumble, The Stone Zone, 8/12/24]
    • Trump ally Laura Loomer claimed, “When @Tim_Walz gets angry the Gay Twang that so many homosexual men have comes out in his voice.” Loomer also wrote, “Wait till reporters start asking the gay bar owners in Minnesota about Tim Walz. There’s a reason why he shakes his wife’s hand and panders to the gay community, and it’s not because he’s awkward.” [Twitter/X, 8/11/24, 8/7/24]
    • Far-right troll Jack Posobiec posted: “Tim Walz is like if Joe Biden was fat and gay.” [Twitter/X, 8/6/24] 
    • In response to a Bloomberg article saying that Walz has “traditional manly man traits,” Bill Mitchell wrote, “Are they serious? The way Walz moves on stage with the jazz hands I was under the impression he was gay.” [Twitter/X, 8/12/24]

  • Conservative media have lambasted Harris for giving seemingly the same stump speech at events, a common and widely used campaign tactic

    • Fox & Friends attacked Harris for repeating her stump speech, with co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy saying it’s an “A.I. campaign” and co-host Lawrence Jones calling Harris a “robot” and complaining that “she's doing these canned speeches over and over.” Co-host Steve Doocy further faulted Harris for “no ad-libbing, she is just keeping to the script” while giving her speech. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/9/24] 
    • Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner accused Harris of “sticking with the essential same stump speech every single time.” Faulkner then praised “former President Donald Trump [for] taking reporter questions for more than an hour yesterday. Not scripted.” [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 8/12/24]
    • Fox Business host Cheryl Casone claimed that Harris was “even copying herself,” giving “the same speech basically in Michigan and Wisconsin.” Casone then played a side-by-side comparison of lines from the two speeches and asked her guest if it is “normal campaigning in politics,” while the show’s chyron said, “Harris accused of repeating the same speech.” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 8/12/24]
    • Fox News host and former Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany complained that Harris “stood on a stage five times, delivered the same 17-minute speech off her teleprompter five times. That's all she's done. The same words.” McEnany then rhetorically asked if Democrats are “counting on a 17-minute stump speech to take her to Pennsylvania Avenue? Give me a break — the American people deserve better.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 8/8/24]
    • NewsBusters Executive Editor Tim Graham admitted “there’s nothing wrong with having a standard stump speech,” then criticized Harris for supposedly being “allergic to improvising speech with reporters.” [Twitter/X, 8/9/24]